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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23795422">Until the Sun Comes Up</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikeWritesThings/pseuds/MikeWritesThings'>MikeWritesThings</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>demigods [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Apex Legends (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), Demigods, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pining, References to Ancient Greek Religion &amp; Lore, Relationship Issues, Trans Octane | Octavio Silva, but it gets solved dont worry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:13:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>29,451</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23795422</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikeWritesThings/pseuds/MikeWritesThings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Taejoon didn't return to Camp Half-Blood, one summer—he just vanished into thin air, and left Octavio behind, like everyone else did.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Crypto | Park Tae Joon/Octane | Octavio Silva, Lifeline | Ajay Che &amp; Octane | Octavio Silva</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>demigods [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2102661</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i got c*mmissioned to do a PJO au! here's chapter 1 of 2, and heres a brief summary of the PJO universe for those who are unfamiliar:</p><p>this is set in a universe where the greek gods have kids with mortal humans, called demigods, and they go to a summer camp so they're hidden from monsters and learn how to fight them. there is also something called "the mist" that makes mortals not see things like monsters or swords.</p><p>also, some characters from the PJO series are here, but just like. the godly characters and chiron. there is no percy or annabeth etc, with maybe vague references to very minor characters for world building. despite there being no percy, some plot points in this fic are direct results of the PJO series i.e. the 13 rule, but u dont need to read PJO to understand this !! enjoy !!</p><p>SIDE NOTE: i also have not read the trials of apollo series and havent read the og pjo series in a VERY long time so im sorry if i get any fine details wrong !</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>some ages are tweaked a little because in the PJO universe, there are hardly any older people. also, crypto being 31 is not canon, and i normally headcanon him as being 27 while octane is 24, but for this au he is only 2 years older than octane.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Octavio wasn’t having a good day even <em> before </em> the man he’d had a crush on for the past five years blew him up with a Rubik's Cube.</p><p>Okay, rewind a bit, because he had the tendency to get ahead of himself—</p><p>Octavio did not have a good time, <em>ever</em>, when entering New York.</p><p>Well, sometimes he did—whenever he wanted everyone to have fun and party, it spread around, and it was great. But the other times? Coming into New York in a bad mood meant everyone had to get angry because of it. The last time he visited Olympus? A literal riot in the streets. </p><p>That, however, was neither here nor there—he was currently in the city hunting down some monsters, because if he didn’t Ajay was like, actually going to kill him once and for all. <em> Yeah, </em> it was his fault the monsters were here in the first place but who <em> hadn’t </em> accidentally summoned a flock of murderous birds from time to time?</p><p>“Why would you listen to anything,” Ajay had shouted at him as he hopped onto the motorbike he wasn’t technically allowed to have, “<em>Anything </em> that the <em> kobalos </em>says? You fucking idiot!”</p><p>“Don’t let my dad hear you call me that,” Octavio called, ignoring the fact that his dad was probably going to kill him too. The godly one, anyway. His mortal dad hadn’t spoken to him in years, and probably wouldn’t care that Octavio had unleashed the legendary Stymphalian birds onto the good people of New York, because he had never cared about anything that Octavio did.</p><p>Octavio sped down Long Island, keeping an eye on the flock of metallic birds that were glowing in the distant sky. It was good that Camp Half-Blood was a little out of the way of the rest of the dense population of Long Island, because he didn’t want to be pulled over by the cops right now for going almost ninety miles an hour.</p><p>He made a sharp turn when the road curved into a different direction, instead rolling onto more bumpy terrain, annoyed that he’d have to slow down a little or else he’d be spending the afternoon in a hospital—or worse, the camp infirmary.</p><p>Normally, Octavio might have enjoyed the presence of some Stymphalian birds. Their razor-sharp feathers and harsh beaks would have been fun to fight against, but he had to try really hard to not be...well, <em> him </em>right now, what with the camp in chaos and his dad being up to his nose in work. </p><p>The chase went on for a good two hours, so long that he was beginning to fear that they were leading him from Montauk and into the city.</p><p>
  <em> Please don’t be heading towards the city please don’t be heading towards the city please don’t... </em>
</p><p>The birds gave a screech that sounded a lot like a fork scraping against a plate before diving down, hovering over the traffic leaving the island and going into Manhattan.</p><p>“Fuck,” Octavio groaned out loud, and repeated this when they rained a shower of their deadly feathers onto the innocent mortals below. At least they were all in their cars—the Mist would probably make it seem like they were getting a sudden, violent onslaught of hail.</p><p>Hopefully the Mist would also disguise the fact that he was once again doing ninety miles an hour.</p><p>As he drove by the hundreds of people stepping outside of their vehicles to gawk at the damage done to their windshields and the hoods of their cars, several got angry and ripped their side mirrors off. A few even started kicking others down and blaming them for the damage.</p><p>
  <em>Oops.  </em>
</p><p>The only good thing about the birds flying down Manhattan was that they flew low enough that they had to adhere to the general layout of the city if they wanted to avoid crashing into buildings. Octavio slowed down a large amount but was still barreling down the sidewalk, metal legs akimbo and nearly scraping over the pavement as he tried to keep himself from hitting pedestrians. They all dived out of his way, shouting curses at him and then one another, but he paid them no mind—the birds were going right for Times Square, probably attracted to the bright screens.</p><p>They then dove out of his sight, which. Great. Time to go through New York traffic.</p><p>Weaving in and out of cars and taxis that were almost stationary, Octavio eventually abandoned his bike in the middle of a crosswalk and instead started sprinting, ignoring the numerous people honking their horns angrily at him. He reached into his backpack and pulled out the crudely-fashioned slingshot he’d made with the wood nymphs last week, but it was difficult to do all of this at once while pushing through crowds of people.</p><p>He made the quick decision to instead climb on top of the cars in traffic, leaping and running from cab to cab while several opened their doors to step out and yell at him, which was kind of annoying, but it was whatever. He was about to save their lives, anyway.</p><p>Loading a pellet made of Celestial bronze into his slingshot, he scanned the area, trying to figure out which area around him was experiencing the most madness, the most panic—unfortunately, the most concentrated amounts of madness were the angry New Yorkers he’d left behind in his destructive wake.</p><p>Man, this was the most useless fucking demigod power <em> ever. </em>Why couldn’t he have cool zappy powers like Natalie or fire powers like some of the Hephaestus kids did?</p><p>At least, the good news about him not detecting any particular mass of panicked mortals meant that the birds weren’t actively harming people, which was both good and bad for him. Good that he probably wouldn’t get fucking smited for accidentally causing the death of civilians, bad that he currently had no idea where the hell the birds were. </p><p>Thankfully, he didn’t have to look for long.</p><p>“Mierda,” he said out loud, looking at the flock of them perched on top of Nasdaq Tower, glinting in a deadly manner above a TurboTax ad. He wondered why that particular ad—well, it <em> was </em> tax season. Maybe birds had to pay taxes, too.</p><p>“Look at all those pigeons,” he heard a little girl whisper to her mother as they passed by, pointing at them. Okay, so that’s what the mortals saw. They were probably also about to see a crazy guy start shooting at pigeons soon, once he learned how to use this slingshot.</p><p>Octavio took aim, doing his best to stand still and keep his arm steady even though he was standing at the corner of one of the busiest fucking places on Earth. He was jostled by passerby while he did his best to shoot at the birds—the Celestial bronze pellet shot through the air with a whistling sound right as someone shoved him. The TurboTax ad changed to a battery ad, and the pellet soared through the Energizer Bunny’s face, putting a hole in his sunglasses. One of the Stymphalian birds squawked loudly at him, almost mocking his missed shot.</p><p>“Yo, what’s that?” A random man asked him, gesturing to his hands.</p><p>“A slingshot,” Octavio said, waving it around. Amatuerly made, yes, but obviously a slingshot. There was no reason the Mist should present it as anything else. It was literally just a slingshot.</p><p>The man’s eyes widened, and he screamed in panic, “<em>Gunman!</em>”</p><p>God <em> damn it. </em></p><p>The people around him screamed, scattering in different directions. A few brave souls tried tackling him to the ground, but Octavio was quick and ducked out of their grasps, deciding that he had to do this the hard way after all.</p><p>Time to stab a few chickens.</p><p>When Octavio had first gotten his new legs, he spent a good two months practicing their vertical walking function, because it was fun, and also because he had looked stupid the first time he'd tried it. His legs had been firmly planted on the sides of buildings and trees, but he had to learn how to balance and keep his body up along with them. Once, he had gotten stuck, bent over backwards while trying to kick his legs off of the side of the dining pavilion, and Renee had to come to his rescue and pull him down.</p><p>Now though, he easily started scaling the side of the building, running vertically up like...maybe Spiderman, or something. No, Spiderman swung around buildings and crawled up them like a little bug, he didn’t run on them...did he? Maybe he did. Octavio didn’t know, he needed to catch up on those movies.</p><p>Pulling his bronze knife from its sheath on his thigh, Octavio managed to leap from the building onto the large digital sign, climbing on top of it. The thrill of heights made him smile a little at the Stymphalian birds, about a dozen of them, each easily the size of a refrigerator with gleaming metallic feathers and even harsher-looking beaks. Their red eyes seemed to glint angrily in the sunlight, and he probably wasn’t helping their violent tempers when he said,</p><p>“Wassup? First time in the city? You know, there’s a great flauta place I think you guys would do well in.”</p><p>They merely looked at him. A few were even preening their feathers, paying him no mind.</p><p>“Get it? ‘Cuz chicken flautas...anyways, c’mon, aren’t you going to attack me?”</p><p>One of them craned its neck back to swallow a bug that had flown past its face. Octavio sighed, disappointed, because what was the point of murderous birds if they weren’t going to fight you?</p><p>“He’s up there, officers!” He heard someone shout below. Peering over the edge, he saw a crowd of people standing beneath the large billboard, a police cruiser pulled to the side and several uniformed individuals watching him. A few were even filming him on their phones.</p><p>He wondered how this situation looked to them: a gunman on the streets who climbed the Nasdaq Tower so that he could terrorize a few pigeons.</p><p>He was a little annoyed at them. Normally, he thrived in this sort of attention, doing dangerous thing after dangerous thing to generate frenzy and an adrenaline rush, but these past few days, his heart hadn’t been in it. The camp was in disarray after Renee’s recent prophecy, and he was a little bit worried about...</p><p>A few of the birds suddenly spread their wings, showering the people below with a torrent of deadly down, and Octavio yelled, “Hey, hey, none of that!” and proceeded to stab one with his knife. </p><p>It burst into dusty yellow powder, the wind blowing it into his face, and he coughed. <em> Ew. </em></p><p>He came to the realization that they probably hadn’t been attacking him because he was the one who had <em>summoned</em> them, and they were instead targeting people he was annoyed at. Good birdies. It was a shame that he had to get rid of them.</p><p>Stabbing through a few more, he kept his mouth and eyes squeezed shut so he wouldn’t inhale any more monster dust. He was disappointed at the fact that they weren’t putting up any sort of fight. They just sat there and waited for their turn to be disintegrated—they could've at least given him a <em> little </em> bit of a challenge after he had jumped over cars and walked up a building to get to them.</p><p>Once he had finished getting rid of them, he walked sideways onto the building and out of sight, hearing the gasps of people down below watching him. He wondered what they were seeing, what they were <em> feeling, </em> but his questions were answered soon enough when another shriek of “gun!” rang out and everyone below him formed one writhing, massive crowd of people trying to duck inside random buildings.</p><p>Man. He could really go for a drink right now.</p><p>He found a convenience store, buying a can of Monster from the dead-eyed cashier whose nose snubbed at the dust Octavio tracked in, probably thinking it was some other type of New York grime. Octavio chugged half the can in one go as he left the building, avoiding the police officers who were still hunting him down for the crime of pigeon murder.</p><p>There was no way he could recover his bike after leaving it in the middle of traffic, so he’d have to take the train back to camp...he hated waiting, though...and being around so many people wasn’t going to be good...</p><p>Pausing suddenly, he backtracked, having sworn he’d glimpsed something down an alleyway. He stood there, drink in hand as he squinted at the shadows, trying to make out who was standing there.</p><p>Maybe any other person would have simply passed by, but being a demigod, you just didn’t let people standing in the shadows slide. They could be monsters or gods or <em>worse</em>, and he did not feel like doing <em>worse</em> right now. Not after that prophecy.</p><p>A woman who passed by him must have felt the brunt of his quick burst of anxiety—she collapsed to the ground, and people began to panic, calling for a doctor, searching her pockets for her phone. Someone ran off with her wallet. Another person snagged the choker from her throat and split.</p><p>Yeah, this was why he didn’t do New York.</p><p>Stepping into the alley, away from everyone else, Octavio unsheathed his knife, holding it loosely in his left hand in case it really was, like, a homeless guy or something. He approached the dark figure in the shadows, not bothering to hide his presence, before raising his weapon so the glow of it could illuminate the person.</p><p>“Hi,” Taejoon Park said, raising an eyebrow at the sharp point near his face.</p><p>“What the fuck,” Octavio replied, letting his knife fall down to his side. He had also dropped his can of Monster to the ground in shock. “Why are you standing in the dark, man?”</p><p>“I don’t want to be seen,” Taejoon said, infuriatingly truthful and mysterious at the same time, like he tended to be.</p><p>“Oh,” Octavio said, and then leaped at him without warning, throwing his arms around his neck in a hug.</p><p>It had been years since he’d last seen Taejoon, so long without contact that he’d begun to think that he’d gotten eaten by a cyclops or something, and with Renee’s prophecy, those fears had only worsened considerably these past three days. But it was good to see him here, even if Octavio was filthy and covered in bird dust and being followed by the police.</p><p>Taejoon hugged him back, his hands finding his waist and giving it a squeeze, so he let go, patting his old friend on his arms before backing out of the alley.</p><p>“You’ve gotten everyone’s attention, as usual,” Taejoon commented, stepping out of the shadows and onto the sidewalk along with Octavio. He had no idea where the police were, but being in the presence of his old friend was making him calm enough to not induce any sort of madness in people, so they wouldn’t find him. Probably. </p><p>“In my defense, the <em> kobalos </em> told me the incantation would make my afternoon interesting.”</p><p>“Why would you listen to anything the <em> kobalos </em> says?” Taejoon asked, but despite the chiding tone of his voice, he was smiling. That same smile that made Octavio feel things.</p><p>These four years had done something different to Taejoon—his face had slimmed down a little, eyes narrower and dark circles beneath them. His hair was cut differently, shaved all around except for the top, which Octavio guessed was normally short and straight, but was currently shaggy and long, hanging in front of his eyes. His clothes weren’t in much better condition, his jacket stained with dark brown and red, a mixture of days-old dirt and blood. His jeans had holes in them. His shoes were falling apart. He’d certainly been through <em> something, </em>even if he wasn't dead.</p><p>“What’s up with your...” Octavio gestured to him, trying to find the right word. “Everything?”</p><p>Taejoon kept his eyes trained forward, the small smile he had given Octavio having faded, his lips now pressed into a serious line. He stuck his hands into his pockets, glancing over his shoulder, as if checking to see if anyone was behind them.</p><p>“I’m being followed by the Furies," he finally said, voice quieting considerably, as if he feared being overheard.</p><p>Octavio blinked. “Those old hags? <em> Why?</em>”</p><p>“I might’ve angered Hades.”</p><p>The ground beneath their feet rumbled, but they both paid no mind. The two of them had never been cautious about using the real names of gods and monsters, a fact that had caused Ajay many headaches throughout the years. They had once even made Elliott faint when they’d said ‘Kronos’ out loud, which was <em> hilarious</em>, but if Taejoon was really being followed by the Furies, that probably wasn't something to laugh about.</p><p>“What’ve you been up to?” Octavio asked, and the two of them entered the subway from the street, hopping past the turnstiles along with the other mortals. “These past years?”</p><p>He had a lot of questions he wanted to ask<em> , </em> mainly: <em> why did you leave camp, did you find what you were looking for, what the fuck how could you leave me, </em> but was holding back for everyone else’s sake. At least until they got to camp, and he could have Chiron and Ajay do damage control.</p><p>“We can talk about that later,” Taejoon said, and the two of them watched a train shutter by.</p><p>"So, are you coming back to camp?" Octavio asked, nudging a discarded Starbucks cup aside with his foot.</p><p>Taejoon didn't respond for a long moment, eyes sweeping around, focusing on each individual person before them. He seemed different. Yeah, people wouldn't be the same after four years, but he seemed more....<em>paranoid. </em>Even if he was being followed by the Furies, they'd dealt with them before, and they could do it again—but he seemed almost scared of something else.</p><p>"...Yes. For a little while."</p><p>Maybe he wasn't <em> just </em>being followed by them. Maybe there was more going on.</p><p>"How long?" Octavio asked, deciding he could pester the other man for details later, when they were safely inside camp grounds.</p><p> “...I have to use the bathroom.”</p><p>He abruptly turned and left. Octavio wanted to follow him in case that fucker was ditching him, not even <em> ten minutes </em> after they’d seen each other for the first time in years, but something else caught his attention—an old lady, sitting on a folding chair in the middle of the subway, knitting a shapeless bag in her lap, her face so wrinkly it looked like leather.</p><p>Oh, come on, they weren’t even trying.</p><p>With a sigh, he pulled his knife out and approached her, a little cautious in case wings and claws sprouted from her. None of that happened, so she probably hadn’t sensed him, but he could at least get some answers out of her if Taejoon was going to be all mysterious and stuff.</p><p>“‘Sup, abuela,” Octavio said, leaning against the folding chair to look at her knitting work. Sloppy. “Why are you following us?”</p><p>“Huh?” The elderly woman asked, looking up at him and squinting. Her teeth were very yellow and her breath smelled awful. “You say something?”</p><p>“Don’t play dumb with me, lady,” he sighed, waving his knife around carelessly. “You know I’m about to kill you, right? Please fight me, I’m so <em> bored.</em>”</p><p>This was a mistake.</p><p>“Gun!” Someone screamed, and everyone started yelling for the police.</p><p>“You might as well, now that everyone’s got their panties in a twist," Octavio said, twirling the knife around, but the old woman just kept squinting at him.</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>Okay. So she was being annoying on purpose. Whatever.</p><p>Octavio stabbed her—except he didn’t. His knife sailed harmlessly through her body, so he stabbed her plastic folding chair instead. With wide eyes, he yanked it free, and instead tried decapitating her. Nothing happened—his knife passed through her neck like it was air.</p><p>...Aw, fuck. He’d just tried stabbing an old lady for no reason. </p><p>Octavio never claimed to be good at being a demigod, in his defense.</p><p>“Wrong hag, honey,” a scratchy voice said from behind him.</p><p>“You all look the same,” Octavio said without turning around, and immediately ducked, narrowly avoiding a set of claws from taking his head off his shoulders.</p><p>“My goodness,” the mortal grandma said, sounding mildly disturbed. “Please don’t get blood on my bag.”</p><p>“I’ll try,” he grunted, and jumped high, made possible with his legs, twisting in mid-air to slice through the Fury with his knife. She had anticipated this move, though underestimated how high he could jump, her claws barely nicking his shins, which didn’t hurt anyways, considering they were also made of Celestial bronze. Hearing distant shrieks from the darkness of the train tunnel, Octavio wondered if her two sisters were about to attack too.</p><p>The Furies were servants of Hades: three ugly old ladies with mouths full of yellow teeth, leathery bat wings, and whips covered in hellfire that they used to torture evildoers in the Underworld. Honestly, once you got used to them, they weren't that bad. Definitely in the top ten list of <em>Scary Monsters,</em> but nowhere near top five.</p><p>By now, most of the mortals had either escaped onto trains or ran back up onto the street, leaving the subway empty except for the grandma who was still knitting. He admired her apathy towards the situation, but it was kind of annoying having to fight the Furies and make sure they didn't accidentally kill a regular person too.</p><p>Getting slammed into a wall, Octavio gave a groan, but despite the pain he was starting to get excited, and even better, his excitement didn’t seem to be affecting the old lady. He started openly taunting the Fury, rolling out of the way of her attacks and purposely toying with her.</p><p>He didn't get to do it often, but it was <em>fun</em> to make fun of monsters. Fun to fight them and get his blood pumping, let the adrenaline carry him through the battle until he finally had enough and sent them back to Tartarus where they belonged. Consequences of his excitement be damned.</p><p>He heard the flapping of two pairs of wings, so large that the noises they made sounded like a hundred drums being beat all at once, and knew that the Fury’s sisters were coming to join her in fighting him. Fucking sweet.</p><p>Octavio used the verticality function of his legs to maneuver himself above her, stabbing through the top of her head with his knife. She gave a demonic shriek, her yellow eyes bulging in their sockets before she burst into yellow ashes. He dropped back down, avoiding the large pile of Fury dust as he faced her sisters, who were glaring at him with hatred making their eyes blaze. Thankfully, neither of them were using their fiery whips, probably afraid of making the tunnel collapse and killing themselves along with him.</p><p>Octavio readied his knife, heart thumping and blood running hot through his veins. <em>Finally, a challenge.</em></p><p>“<em>Yah</em>,” he suddenly heard a voice call from his left, and he jerked his head to see Taejoon standing there, not looking very surprised to see two Furies in front of him. “Catch.”</p><p>He tossed something through the air, and with quick, automatic reflexes Octavio caught it, looking at the object in his palm. It was a solved Rubik’s Cube—satisfying to look at, yes, but completely useless in this current situation.</p><p>“What the hell is this for?” Octavio asked. One of the Furies laughed at both his confusion and the seemingly useless object he had just been given.</p><p>And then they all blew up.</p><hr/><p>Okay, rewind a bit more, back to when this all technically began—</p><p>Octavio’s thirteenth birthday. He’d never had good birthdays, and they were usually planned by his father’s secretary. This new secretary had known literally nothing about him, and had set up a princess-themed party for Octavio, despite having never once been interested in princesses his entire life. The secretary and his daughter had attended, a girl named Ajay with pink hair in buns, and they were also the only people there, because he didn't have any school friends.</p><p>Octavio would never forget Ajay looking him up and down, and saying with a scrunched up face, “<em>Ew</em>". To be fair to her, he had been covered in leaves and twigs from climbing the trees in Central Park all afternoon.</p><p>Octavio hadn’t known it then, but Ajay had been assessing him for camp, trying to see if he was ready for it yet—and he had apparently been unimpressive, what with wearing a dirt-stained t-shirt and having sticky hands from the amount of candy he’d eaten.</p><p>Thirteen was the age in which demigods were supposed to be claimed, so she was there, waiting for a sign; but at the end of the day nothing had happened, so Ajay and her dad left, and Octavio was left alone with his nanny.</p><p>She had lasted an unusually long time—most of his nannies had gone mad looking after him, quitting after a mere month of being forced to clean up his messes and put up with his constant hyperactivity. He had fond memories of one of his nannies at the age of eleven calling him a demon child for launching him and his old rabbit, Navi, off a building with a parachute. They’d both been fine, but she had quit sooner than most, after about three days.</p><p>Anyways, this nanny he called Tía Lalia, which in hindsight wasn’t a very creative name, but she <em> did </em>almost eat Octavio, so she got away with it, at least.</p><p>Tía Lalia was an interesting woman. She was immune to his temper tantrums, the pranks he pulled and the messes he made. She didn’t tolerate them; she scolded him often, forcing him into time-outs or preventing him from playing outside, but despite this she still let him eat whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. She let him have snacks at midnight, took him out for ice cream every day, and even let him get <em> two </em> orders of french fries at McDonalds. She was by far his favorite nanny ever.</p><p>On his birthday, Tía Lalia was letting him eat as much cake as he wanted. He was on his third slice, pink frosting on his lips as he scarfed down the rich chocolatey goodness. He didn’t particularly care if he was going to throw up later—this birthday had sucked, so far. He deserved this, and Tía Lalia was letting him have it, and he wasn’t one to turn down such an opportunity.</p><p>“Eat as much as you like, young one,” Tía Lalia said, running her hand smoothly down the side of his face, which he tried ducking away from. “Happy thirteenth.”</p><p>“Thanks,” he said around a mouthful of cake. He swallowed heavily, pushing some of the icing that had fallen off around with his fork. “...When’s dad going to get home?”</p><p>“Mr. Silva? He’s going to be out for the next week. I told you that, didn’t I?” Tía Lalia answered, sounding a little too happy about the fact that his father would not be returning for several days. Octavio, however, was disappointed, but at this point in his life the disappointment was something he was used to, so he just kept eating his cake, chewing silently.</p><p>“What’s the matter, young one?”</p><p>A lot of things, really. This birthday <em> sucked. </em>He had been looking forward to becoming a teenager for a while, now—back then, thirteen seemed like such an 'adult' age, but he didn't feel any different than he normally did. That on top of his father once again leaving him behind was making a hard stone of resentment form in his stomach, replacing his hunger.</p><p>“Nothing,” he lied, and shoved away his plate. “I’m done. Can I have a soda?”</p><p>“I’m afraid not." She folded her hands over the table, smiling at him fondly. "I think you’ve had enough.”</p><p>“Pleeeease?” He whined. “It’s my birthdaaaay.”</p><p>“I said no.” Tía Lalia suddenly pinched his cheek, causing him to flinch. “Look at all that baby fat.”</p><p>“I’m not fat,” he said defensively, shoving her hand away.</p><p>“No, you’re not. Despite my best efforts.”</p><p>“I mean, I <em> could </em> be fat if you let me have a Coke,” he tried, because he <em> really </em>wanted one.</p><p>“<em>No,</em>” Tía Lalia repeated. “I hate the way carbonated beverages make children taste. <em> Bubbly.</em>”</p><p>Something about that sounded really, really fucking weird to Octavio, so he stood up, trying to play it cool. He wanted to get away from her after that comment, but her hand circled around his thin wrist, and her skin started melting off. Well, maybe melt was the wrong word—more like shed. Like a snake sheds its skin.</p><p>Her upper body mostly remained the same—long, wavy blonde hair, yellow eyes with slit pupils, but her lower body shed away to reveal a long serpent’s tail where her legs used to be.</p><p>Octavio did not want to admit this, but he had screamed, <em> a lot, </em> when that happened. Hey, <em> you </em>have your favorite nanny turn into a monster and try to eat you.</p><p>Her jaw had unhinged, much like a snake’s, and he was greeted with rows of sharp teeth, like sharks had. He tried tugging himself out of her grip, but Tía Lalia didn’t let him go, her snake’s tail wrapping around his legs to keep him from running away, squeezing so hard that he began to lose circulation in them.</p><p>Octavio raised his arm so that she first bit into the flesh of his forearm, shielding his head from being taken off in one clean bite. He shrieked in pain as he felt the rows of her jagged teeth dig into the bone of his arm, screaming in Spanish for help, hoping that someone would hear him—he lived in a penthouse, where were all the security guards?—but none of them came to his aid.</p><p>His vision was starting to black at the edges from the pain and shock, and the last thing he saw before passing out was his dad’s secretary bursting into the room, not wearing any pants.</p><p>The next thing he knew, he woke up to find Ajay leaning over him. Her hair hung loose out of its buns, messy, like she'd gotten into a fight, and she gave a sigh of relief as his eyes fluttered open.</p><p>“Oh, thank the gods,” she said, sitting back in her chair and holding her hand to her chest. "Thought you might've died."</p><p>“Did I pass out?” He groaned, covering his face with his hands. He had no idea where he was, but his head was hurting a lot. “Fuck, is it still my birthday?”</p><p>“It is. Happy birthday.” Ajay patted him on his shoulder. “You’re a demigod.”</p><p>It took him a moment to parse these words.</p><p>“Cool,” Octavio mumbled.</p><p>“Miss Che,” a new voice said, and they both turned to see a man in a wheelchair sitting there, his long brown hair hanging in a loose ponytail over his shoulder. He wore a tweed jacket and had a neatly-combed beard, and looked somewhat like a <em> Lord of the Rings </em> character. “I thought we discussed <em> easing </em> people into that news.”</p><p>“Trust me, she won’t do well with long explanations,” Ajay said, before turning back to face him, handing him a glass of what appeared to be apple juice. “Here, drink this. It’ll continue healing your arm.”</p><p>Octavio jerked his left arm out in front of him, looking at the scars on his forearm. They looked awful, red marks that looked like he’d recently gotten into a shark fight, but they somehow looked much better than he thought they should look. If today was still his birthday, he didn’t know how they looked like this, at least a week old.</p><p>“Oh, those are cool,” he said despite this, poking a mark. He'd always found scars interesting.</p><p>“It took us a while to get to camp, so they might not heal all the way, but this is the best we could do,” Ajay said, sounding apologetic. “Mr. Ponderosa’s nose isn’t that good these days, so he didn’t smell her.”</p><p>“Mr. Ponderosa?” Octavio frowned at her. “My dad’s secretary? <em> Your </em>dad? What about him?”</p><p>“He is not Miss Che's father, but rather, a satyr we assigned to protect you until the time was right,” the guy in the wheelchair said, and then added when Octavio’s frown deepened; “A satyr is half man and half goat. I believe you saw him without his pants on.”</p><p>“Yeah, that was traumatic.”</p><p>“He <em> did </em> save her life,” Ajay argued, and Octavio started chugging the apple juice stuff to ignore the prickling feeling in his chest as they kept referring to him as ‘she’. He recoiled instantly, however, staring at the drink. He was <em> sure </em> it was apple juice, but it tasted <em> exactly </em> like Coke.</p><p>It was making him feel good, however, energized and like he hadn’t almost been eaten by his nanny, so he drank more of it until Ajay took it from him, saying firmly, “That’s enough. Too much will kill you.”</p><p>“Cool,” he said, interested, and made grabby hands for more.</p><p>“No, it’s <em> not </em> cool." Ajay crossed her arms, and Octavio noticed the t-shirt she hadn't been wearing earlier—bright orange, with the silhouette of a horse with wings on it that said <em> Camp Half-Blood. </em>"It could kill you.”</p><p>“How?”</p><p>“It’s nectar, food for the gods."</p><p>“Yeah, speaking of that—am <em> I </em> a god?”</p><p>“Demigod,” Ajay corrected. She looked to the bearded man, who nodded at her, encouraging her to go on. “It means one of your parents was a god. Probably your mom, because your dad is a mortal. Do you know any of the Greek gods?”</p><p>When Octavio shook his head, Ajay said, “So your mom could be Athena, she’s the goddess of wisdom and battle; or Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty; or even Nike, goddess of victory. There are more, but you get the idea."</p><p>“Nike, like the shoe brand?”</p><p>Ajay looked unimpressed. “Nike, like the goddess.”</p><p>“Well, who’s <em> your </em> mom?”</p><p>“My mom is a mortal.” Ajay’s chest suddenly puffed out proudly, and she announced, “My father is Apollo, god of the sun, medicine, and music.”</p><p>“Oh.” Compared to Athena, goddess of fighting and Nike, goddess of winning, being the god of music sounded boring. “That’s lame.”</p><p>“Be careful with what you say,” the man cautioned while Ajay looked close to hitting him. “The gods are always listening.”</p><p>Octavio glanced around, taking in the interior of the room he was in. A dozen cots were lined neatly in a row, with a few curtains dotting here and there to give occupants privacy. An infirmary of sorts. “Where am I?”</p><p>“Long Island,” the man answered him. “Camp Half-Blood, one of the only places safe for demigods.”</p><p>Octavio blinked. Long Island? Really? “Does my dad know?”</p><p>“Mr. Ponderosa will be leaving him a message, yes. I’m sure your father was aware of your mother’s status—did he ever tell you she left, or died?”</p><p>“No,” Octavio said.</p><p>The man nodded, not looking very surprised. “I see. Do you have a mother at all?”</p><p>“I’ve had a stepmom,” Octavio said, recalling her face. She’d had blonde hair and green eyes, a white lady with a high-pitched voice that had grated his nerves as a child. His dad had divorced her when he was six—and while he’d never said this out loud, Octavio was sure his father had wanted him to believe that that woman was his real mother, but he had found out the truth when he was eight, flipping through countless photobooks and finding that she had only come into his life when he was twelve months old. “She didn’t last long, though. Who’re you?”</p><p>“My apologies—my name is Chiron. I’m the activities director here at Camp Half-Blood.” Chiron looked Octavio up and down, before asking, “Are you able to stand?”</p><p>He got to his feet, just a little unsteadily, and wondered how long he’d been out. It couldn’t have been too long, right? Five hours, at the most, because it was still his birthday, and he’d been attacked at six in the evening, he was sure. </p><p>“Good,” Chiron said approvingly. He gestured to the door. “Let’s go to the campfire—we put it off for a couple of hours in the hopes that you would regain consciousness and be claimed before midnight. All demigod children must be claimed at age thirteen.”</p><p>Octavio didn’t really understand half of that, but it wasn’t the most pressing matter in his mind right now. He turned to Ajay, who was cleaning up the mess he’d left on the cot he’d been sleeping on. “So is anybody gonna tell me why my Tía Lalia tried to eat me?”</p><p>“That was Lamia. She eats kids,” Ajay said. She started gathering her hair in bunches, tying it up into two separate buns. "Y'know, from those Greek myths."</p><p>“Oh.” Octavio looked back down at the bite marks on his arm. He didn't know any Greek myths, but he guessed the 'eats kids' thing explained why she let him have so much cake. “Is she dead?”</p><p>“I killed her.” Ajay pointed at a pair of drumsticks sitting innocently on a messy coffee table. “You’ll learn how to kill monsters here.”</p><p>“<em>Sweet.</em>”</p><p>“Miss Silva,” Chiron called, and Octavio left the house with him, but froze, staring at the thing before him. The wheelchair laid on the ground, knocked over, a pair of false legs attached to it. A great white stallion was stretching its legs in front of him, but from the neck up, the stallion was Chiron.</p><p>“Do you mind picking that up for me? I’ve been doing that far too often these days.”</p><p>Octavio righted the wheelchair, still staring at the sleek horse <em> thing </em> in front of him. </p><p>“I’m a centaur,” Chiron said, noticing his wide eyes.</p><p>“How did you <em> fit</em>?” Octavio asked in awe, giving the wheelchair a little shake.</p><p>“A little bit of magic, and a lot of cramped limbs. But we can discuss any of your further questions later—we shall attend the bonfire, and afterwards, sleep. All will be explained to you soon.” Chiron carefully picked his way across a dark field, Octavio following and glancing around. They were on a farm, the building they had just left being a large, blue-painted house, with at least four stories from what he could tell. </p><p>He could see some sort of vineyard in one corner of the field, rows and rows of green plants, but it was hard to tell what fruit they were growing from here. A cluster of strangely-shaped buildings sat to his left, separated from the blue house they had left by a moderately-sized lake and river that seemed to divide the camp in half.</p><p>He could see the shore of Long Island beach at the northern end of the camp, and swore he also saw a climbing wall with lava bursting from certain footholds, but it was hard to tell in the dark. He followed Chiron, whose white stallion body seemed to glow in the moonlight. It was very late at night, and he reached for his phone to check the time, but realized that it was gone. </p><p>“Where’s my phone?” Octavio asked, jogging to catch up with Chiron. He was suddenly not so sure that this wasn’t an elaborate kidnapping situation—it wouldn’t be the first time, anyway, and he <em> wanted </em>to believe that he was half-god, but it all sounded a little crazy, even to him.</p><p>“We encourage demigods to not have cell phones. Using them alerts monsters of your presence—it’s like waving a big sign that says <em>‘come eat me’</em>.”</p><p>Octavio squinted in suspicion, but the two of them came to a sudden halt as a figure materialized in front of them, startling Octavio and causing him to trip backwards.</p><p>Ajay, who had caught up with them, bent down to help him to his feet while Chiron said, “Ah! Mr. D, back from Olympus, I see?”</p><p>“It’s too late to deal with you,” ‘Mr. D’ said gruffly. He had a scratchy voice, and curly hair so black that it appeared almost purple in the night. Octavio was also pretty sure that he was wearing a vibrant Hawaiian shirt, which, <em> ew. </em></p><p>As if reading his mind, Mr. D looked at him directly, a judgemental look on his face, and he felt a shiver of caution run down his spine.</p><p>“Yes, well, this is our new camper, Al—”</p><p>Mr. D raised his hand, cutting Chiron off. “Stop. This one’s mine.”</p><p>Chiron bowed his head, looking just a little surprised. “Your daughter?”</p><p>“No,” Mr. D said. He approached Octavio and clapped him on the shoulder with so much force that he stumbled a little. He didn't seem very tall or very strong, but Octavio could almost feel his power in his grip.  “What’s your name?”</p><p>“Uhh.” He looked up at the guy’s face—he had a certain washed-up appearance, but his eyes blazed with a purple light. It kind of intimidated him, but it was cool at the same time. “Ale—”</p><p>“Your<em> real </em>name.”</p><p>Octavio blinked, but suddenly understood what was being asked of him when a warm feeling spread from Mr. D's hand on his shoulder to his chest, lifting a weight from it. He glanced at Chiron and Ajay, who were both watching him, confused, but he felt like it was alright to say it in front of them. He had the feeling that this man was powerful, and more importantly, on his side.</p><p>“Octavio,” he said, confident.</p><p>“Right.” Mr. D yawned, taking his hand off of his shoulder. “This is my son, Octavio. Now get him out of my sight.”</p><p>He trudged away towards the big blue house that the group had just left, leaving behind the faint smell of grapes in his wake. When he was out of earshot, Chiron bowed to him.</p><p>“Octavio Silva, son of Dionysus, I apologize for misgendering you so frequently."</p><p>Octavio ignored his apology and said, “Hey, I thought my mom was gonna be my godly parent? Is that guy a god? What the hell is he the god of?”</p><p>“That is Dionysus, the camp director, but we just call him Mr. D, here. He is the god of wine,” Chiron said.</p><p>There was a rather anticlimactic silence.</p><p>“And theater,” he added. </p><p>“Whose dad is lame, now?” Ajay asked him mockingly.</p><p>“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Chiron warned, and Ajay bowed her head in apology, but was still smirking. “As for the assumption that your godly parent was your mother...well, it is not unheard of for campers to have same-sex parents. Of course, that is mostly Apollo’s doing—Kayla Knowles has a mortal father as well—but aside from that, Mr. D is also the patron god of intersex and transgender individuals. It could explain how you came to be.”</p><p>Something wasn’t adding up in Octavio’s mind—his father was, like, violently homophobic—but he decided that his disappointment in his godly parent being the wine dude was more pressing.</p><p>“So what, do I get powers? Do demigods have powers? Can I make wine out of water? Like Jesus?”</p><p>“We don’t mention Jesus here,” Ajay said. Lightning cracked across the sky. “That’s why.”</p><p>“There is no reason to make everyone else stay up, now that you have been claimed,” Chiron said with a tired sigh. He definitely looked younger, more refined than Dionysus had, but something about him seemed ancient as well. “Miss Che, please show him his cabin.”</p><p>“Yes sir,” Ajay said, and grabbed his hand, leading him towards the cluster of buildings he had seen earlier. Getting closer to them, he realized just how strange some of them looked—two were literally glowing, one silver and the other gold. Another looked exactly like a bank, and the one next to it looked the same, but with peacocks carved ornately into its pillars.</p><p>They stopped outside of one of the most boring-looking cabins, though, a plain wooden one with vines growing over the side, curling over the doorway and appearing to threaten anyone who tried to enter without permission.</p><p>“This is where you’re going to sleep, every night,” Ajay said. She let go of his hand and stepped away, looking towards the golden cabin, which seemed to create false daylight with its glow, before she turned to face him again. “And I’m sorry. ‘Bout the misgendering.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Octavio said with a shrug. He was used to it.</p><p>“No, no, I—me too.” Ajay looked down at her feet. “Nobody ever realized I was a girl ‘till I came here last year. He seems lame, but Mr. D’s kids are powerful in their own way. I’m sure you’ll do fine. And I get that having rich parents ain’t all they cracked up to be. Sorry I was so mean to you.”</p><p>Octavio stared at her, taking all that information in. They’d known each other for a few short hours, at most, but he felt a sudden connection to her. They had more in common than he’d thought.</p><p>“You can teach me to fight monsters tomorrow to make it up to me,” Octavio said, and glanced around. “And give me a tour.”</p><p>Ajay smiled at him. “Will do. But I think you'll fit in just fine, here. Do you have ADHD, or dyslexia? Most of us do. Our bodies are built for combat—you're not alone."</p><p>"I always just thought I was a freak," Octavio laughed, and Ajay hit him.</p><p>"Hey, don't say that. You're normal here. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood, Silva."</p><p>"Thanks, Che." They waved goodbye to one another, and he watched Ajay make her way to the gold cabin, which illuminated her pink hair. Octavio then entered his own cabin, the vines outside the door reeling back a little as if welcoming him.</p><p>The inside wasn’t any cooler than the outside—half a dozen beds, only one occupied by an older, sleeping boy. More vines grew in here, but they seemed especially concentrated around the lone camper’s bed, but not in as threatening a way as the ones outside the door—more protective, almost. Octavio sat on a bed, suddenly feeling exhausted despite the energy boost the nectar from earlier had given him.</p><p>That lady—Lamia?—had disguised herself as his nanny for three months just so she could eat him. <em> Why? </em> Was it because he was a demigod? Did demigod kids get targeted often like that? And why did his godly dad have to be so <em> lame? </em>If demigod kids got powers, what kind of powers would the son of Dionysus have?</p><p>Closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep, Octavio had a dream about using grapevines to fight off a horde of snake-ladies, and it ended with Ajay exploding the sun and killing them all for him.</p><hr/><p>When the dust settled, Octavio coughing through the whole thing, he peeled his eyes open to see the wreckage before him. The two remaining Furies had been crushed to death, their yellow ash mixing with the white debris from the roof collapsing. Miraculously, the grandma was unscathed, still sitting in her folding chair and wiping the white powder off of her handknit bag.</p><p>“Demigods,” she sighed. “I thought I’d had enough of you when my grandson went to that camp.”</p><p>“Uh,” Octavio said, throaty because he had coughed so much. “Sorry for trying to kill you?”</p><p>“No, I understand.” She hobbled to her feet, the white dust from the collapsed ceiling blending in well with her already pale hair. “Say hello to him, will you? Ares cabin—Shaun.”</p><p>“I know him!” Octavio said, and she smiled. A throat cleared to his left.</p><p>“Can I have that back?” Taejoon asked, holding his hand out.</p><p>“You tried killing me,” Octavio accused, but tossed it anyway. Taejoon caught it and stuffed it into his pocket.</p><p>“Don’t be so dramatic. It wasn’t going to hurt you—I designed it to only hurt monsters.”</p><p>“Okay, smarty-pants. Just be glad I don’t wear a binder anymore, I could’ve suffocated back there.” Octavio climbed up the subway steps with him, before shoving him lightly with his elbow. “You sure you’re not a son of Hephaestus?”</p><p>“I do not want to be related to Elliott,” Taejoon replied, deadpan.</p><p>“Oh, that would be fucking <em> hilarious.</em>”</p><p>The two of them managed to get a taxi back to camp, both covered from head-to-toe in white dust. The cabbie had opened his mouth to protest, but Octavio shoved an extra hundred dollar bill into his hand, and he closed it instantly. </p><p>“I hate cabs,” Octavio complained as the car rolled along—they were so <em> slow. </em></p><p>“it’s better for everyone, this way.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, my bike is probably gone forever, now. I took it here to chase after some Stymphalian birds and I had to leave it on Broadway."</p><p>Taejoon gave him a strange look. “Why didn’t you just take one of the pegasi?”</p><p>“I’m telling you, those things fucking hate me.”</p><p>“As they should.”</p><p>Octavio liked this, between them—this easy conversation, the teasing and sarcasm and general light-hearted tone. It hadn’t always been like this, but he was glad that even several years apart hadn’t set them back to square one, ten years ago, when they barely knew one another and Taejoon was much more closed-off.</p><p>They hadn’t parted on the best of terms, though. It was the summer after he’d turned twenty, and he’d been expecting Taejoon to come back to camp, like he had every year so far—but he never did. He’d had things he wanted to apologize for, things he shouldn’t have done, and he’d even thought he’d scared the other off from coming back. He still thought that, but was too afraid to ask, lest he get upset and cause a car crash. He settled for playfully teasing him, and getting teased back. They could discuss this all at camp.</p><p>Traffic got especially bad going into Long Island, but soon they were cruising along empty roads, heading northeast to Montauk. At one point Octavio dug around in his backpack to show off the sharp feathers he’d taken as a trophy from the Stymphalian birds, and Taejoon took one into his hands, running his finger along the edge, accidentally nicking himself and drawing blood in the process.</p><p>They had to wrap his bleeding hand up in a dirty, torn piece of his jacket, and once they got to camp Octavio ushered him towards the Big House, where Ajay was sitting on the deck, drumming her shock sticks against the table while she watched a group of campers play basketball on the courts.</p><p>“Guess who?” Octavio called, and her head jerked to look at him, eyes widening when she caught sight of Taejoon.</p><p>“Park!” She yelled, getting to her feet and rushing towards him, throwing her arms around his neck like Octavio had done earlier. “Thought you were <em> dead! </em> Oh, you’re bleedin’, let me take care of that.”</p><p>Octavio’s excitement hit him all at once—being back in camp with Taejoon for the first time in years, like everything was back to normal, and his emotions being free of the constraints of having to control himself around mortals—it all stacked up so his excitement was palpable in the air, rolling over other nearby campers in waves.</p><p>The Apollo and Ares kids shooting hoops got more aggressive in their game, whooping loudly and waving their arms in celebration every time a goal was made. A watching dryad screeched when her boyfriend scored, and the two ran towards one another and kissed passionately.</p><p>“Get inside the damn house, Octavio,” Ajay said, eyes trained on the couple making out on the basketball court. “Calm down.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Octavio said, but he was still grinning from ear-to-ear as he hopped onto the deck to follow her into the infirmary located inside. She didn’t react much to being around him, and neither did Taejoon—they were both used to him, having built a sort of immunity to the madness he induced by just existing and having emotions.</p><p>Because gods were multifaceted—you could not simply attribute just one quality to each god, one aspect for them to reign over, when it was not true. Dionysus was the patron of satyrs, of transgender and intersex individuals. He was the god of wine, fertility, theater, and most importantly, in Octavio’s case—madness, frenzy, and party.</p><p>Octavio’s emotions unwillingly affected others, inducing madness that he had no control over, but he was gettinh a little better at curing it; his father did not just cause frenzy, but stopped it.</p><p>Today, though, he would rather leave that up to his father for when he got back to camp, lest he accidentally fuck things up like last time. Renee was still mad at him for causing Natalie to burst into inconsolable tears for two hours straight, even though he hadn’t meant to.</p><p>Ajay caught Taejoon up on recent camp events, from Renee’s new prophecy to the disappearance of their friend and one of the oldest campers, Anita. Ares, the god of war, was enraged that his favorite daughter was missing, and was causing a ruckus up in Olympus. Dionysus had to meet up with him to sort the issue out, being camp director and all. Taejoon nodded along to her every word, but finally asked, “Are you sure she didn’t just leave?”</p><p>Ajay paused, looking up at him. “Huh?”</p><p>“She’s almost thirty now. She could have just left. Like I did." His lips pressed together, like he suddenly regretted speaking, but he added anyways, "She's always wanted to join the military."</p><p>“Not without telling <em> me, </em>first,” Ajay snapped, her good cheer having faded a little as she harshly wrapped his hand up. “We’re—we’re best friends, you know that.”</p><p>The unsaid words hung in the air between the three of them—Taejoon had been Octavio’s best friend, and yet had never told him,<em> any </em> of them, that he was leaving; and now that it had been brought up, Octavio couldn’t keep himself from asking,</p><p>“Why <em> did </em>you leave?” </p><p>He fixed the other man with a stare, trying to recall the last time they had seen one another without cringing in shame. He’d turned twenty, celebrating in March with the rest of the campers who stayed year-round like he did—Ajay, Anita, Natalie, Renee, Elliott, Marvin, Makoa—Taejoon being noticeably absent from the festivities. He had promised Octavio that yes, he had gotten him a present, and to come to the Hermes cabin when he was all partied out to recieve it.</p><p>Octavio’s spirits and excitement had been high, so high that the party quickly got out of control, but it was fine, since Chiron was supervising, and would occasionally remind Dionysus to help tone it all down periodically. He had managed to slip away from the festivities after about two hours, heading to the Hermes cabin, its shitty paint job more noticeable in the setting sun. </p><p>Octavio would be the first to admit that he got ahead of himself, that he had <em> assumed </em>things—his spirits were high, drunk on the rush of everything he got to do today, unhinged and without damage control for his emotions because there were a limited amount of campers and Dionysus was here to stop everyone from going truly mad. He had pushed the door open, saw Taejoon leaning against the wall, head bent over something—his phone—before he pulled him down by the front of his jacket and kissed him square on the lips.</p><p>He remembered how it felt; Taejoon's mouth was solid against his, warm and moving gently while he reached up a hand to grip his hair.</p><p>That had apparently<em> not </em>been his birthday surprise. His birthday surprise had been a rabbit, tiny and kept in a cage under Taejoon’s bed so nobody would discover it. Taejoon told him all this after shoving Octavio away, both red-faced, Octavio from the party and Taejoon from embarrassment.</p><p>Taejoon lifted his bed covers up to reveal the tiny little bunny, white and staring up at the both of them curiously.</p><p>“You—it’s a fucking rabbit?” Octavio panted, face now flushing red from embarrassment as well. The surprise <em> wasn't </em> them finally making out after six months of...whatever <em> that </em>had been?</p><p>“I remember you told me about your old one,” Taejoon said, and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, which kind of made Octavio want to die. “It wasn’t...”</p><p>They both lapsed into silence, staring at one another while the party raged on in the pavilion, hundreds of feet away. Octavio was embarrassed, first and foremost, but also...disappointed?</p><p>He had felt that the two of them had gotten closer in these past few months than they had ever been. He thought for sure that the feeling between them was mutual, every time they locked eyes and Taejoon gave him a smile that was reserved for him, and him only. That night at the amphitheater last summer, the campfire sparking high in the air with everyone’s good cheer and Taejoon’s hand finding his while he roasted ten marshmallows at once on his knife. They’d almost kissed then, he was sure of it, but Taejoon had pulled away at the last moment and—</p><p>Oh, fuck. Had he been misreading everything? Had he been assuming shit? And now he had just made a fool of himself in front of the one person he'd ever had feelings before, because he had gotten ahead of himself, like he had the tendency to do.</p><p>He was sure the other campers could feel his emotions from here—the party seemed to have quieted somewhat as his spirits took a turn for the negative, and Taejoon slowly sat on his bed, staring at Octavio with furrowed eyebrows.</p><p>“You should go,” he said then, voice quiet. Octavio had listened, for once in his life, and left, slamming the door shut behind him. He had gone straight to the Dionysus cabin to splash his face with water and help cool it down, practicing his smile in the mirror as he tried to get his emotions down to an acceptable level, Chiron’s voice echoing in his head: <em> breathe. Inside. Out. Smile. Breath until your head is steady on your shoulders. </em></p><p>Normally, he scoffed at that old centaur’s words, but tonight it was necessary. He returned to the party, everyone looking a little woozy from having been forcefully calmed down by Dionysus over and over again, especially because they had experienced two extreme ends of emotion in one night. Ajay sloppily poured him a can of Monster, because he wasn’t that fond of alcohol and it was forbidden inside camp borders, anyways, so this was his go-to drink. The party went on until midnight, when Chiron stomped his hooves onto the pavilion and said they should all go to bed.</p><p>Octavio had crashed in his cabin despite the amount of energy drinks he’d had, and when he woke up, it was to that rabbit waiting outside his doorstep and Taejoon’s empty bed.</p><p>Presently, the three of them looked at one another, none sure which should speak first. Ajay let go of Taejoon’s hand, having finished patching it up, before excusing herself to the next room to ‘check for nectar’—leaving the two of them alone. She could sense the mounting anger inside of Octavio, churning his stomach and rising through his chest like bile.</p><p>Taejoon met Octavio’s eyes, lips pursed, like he wasn’t sure where to begin. Octavio arched an eyebrow in response, tapping one metal foot against the ground impatiently, arms crossed over his chest. It was much more noticeable how filthy he was now, surrounded by the (mostly) clean interior of the infirmary, and it only made more questions race through his mind.</p><p>His mood had swiveled so suddenly from excitement about Taejoon's arrival to anger at the fact that he had left in the first place that he was surprised his eyes weren't burning holes into Taejoon's stupid face.</p><p>"Well?" He asked.</p><p>“I’m going to shower,” the other man replied, not answering, and Octavio angrily kicked a chair over. Taejoon didn’t react beyond staring at it, eyebrows raised.</p><p>“Fuck you,” Octavio said, letting anger wash over him, and he jabbed his finger into the other’s dirt-stained chest. “Fuck you, you absolute cunt. I thought you fucking <em> died. </em> I thought you got, I don’t know, kidnapped by a fucking hellhound or something, you piece of <em> shit! </em> You could have at least told me!”</p><p>Taejoon bowed his head, lips pursed. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>Octavio swore in Spanish this time, and kept raving. “I lost my fucking legs while you were gone! Ajay started going to college during the year! Elliott left camp to live with his mom! And you just never fucking came back! You <em> left me!</em>”</p><p>Maybe he was overreacting. He had never dealt well with loss, all too used to being abandoned by others when the going got tough, or they couldn’t handle him. The people here at camp were the first individuals he had always felt couldn’t leave him no matter what, that they were...<em> obligated </em> to put up with him, his lust for adrenaline and the fluctuating emotions that would ensue. That he’d always have them.</p><p>But Ajay had quit being an all-year camper, only returning for summers. Elliott had left camp to take care of his mom, who’d lost her other three sons in a terrible accident. Anita had gone missing along with Taejoon—at least, until today, when he’d spotted the bastard in fucking <em> Manhattan, </em> of all places.</p><p>Everyone was leaving him. He was allowed to be angry, even when they returned.</p><p>"I'm here," Taejoon said, and opened his arms as if to say <em> ta-da. </em>"I didn't mean to leave you, but it was for the best."</p><p>"For me?" Octavio sneered. "Or for you?"</p><p>“For the both of us,” Taejoon said, still straight-faced despite Octavio’s clear agitation, still calm despite the sparks inside of him that made him want to purposely cause a riot.</p><p>“...Well, are you going to stay?” Octavio glared. Taejoon met his gaze, steady, before shaking his head.</p><p>“Probably not.”</p><p>Octavio kicked the chair again, glad he couldn’t feel pain when it splintered beneath his feet. He raised a hand to do something—he didn’t know what, maybe hit the other or grab him by the collar of his jacket, but the door burst open behind them, and they both turned to see Dionysus standing there, a can of Diet Coke in hand.</p><p>“Care to explain why it’s a bloodbath out there?” His father burped, before squinting at Taejoon. “Ah. I see. Taemin.”</p><p>“<em>Joon,</em>” he murmured beneath his breath.</p><p>“Same difference.” Dionysus waved his hand around, as if to say<em> nevermind all that. </em> “Silva, when I arrived, the Apollo cabin was trying to use the Ares cabin as target practice. Not that I don’t mind a little bloodshed, but that would be a lot of paperwork to fill out.”</p><p>“It wasn’t me,” Octavio lied.</p><p>“You suck at lying. Do better.” His father chugged some more Diet Coke, his bright purple tiger-print sweater stretching over his gut. This was what Octavio called his ‘Dad form’—he knew Dionysus had a much handsomer, much younger form, but this particular form screamed ‘middle-aged father of three who drinks to dull the pain of having to care for children’. “I’m not the god of theater just so my son can be an awful actor. Speaking of which, take your drama outside of the camp. I’m going to take a nap.”</p><p>“There is no drama,” Taejoon said, side-stepping the mess Octavio had made of that chair. “I’m going to shower. I’ll return for dinner.”</p><p>“Will you?” Octavio asked, scathingly.</p><p>“I will,” the other man responded, unaffected, and left the room. Octavio watched him leave, face flushing red with barely-restrained anger, before rounding on his father, who was laying on the couch already.</p><p>“Can you cure him from being stupid?” He asked.</p><p>“If I could, I wouldn’t be running this camp,” he replied, eyes covered with one forearm.</p><p>“Can you at least prevent him from leaving until I get to kick his ass?”</p><p>“This is why I don’t have kids anymore. You heroes and your<em> romance.” </em>Dionysus let his forearm drop to his side. “Back in my day, we simply killed those we couldn’t have.”</p><p>His father was being <em> very </em>unhelpful, so Octavio left the room, nearly bumping into Ajay, who was clearly eavesdropping.</p><p>“I knew it,” he said, anger sparking once again.</p><p>“In my defense, sometimes, it’s the only way you’ll tell me things,” she said, not even bothering to pretend to be ashamed at being caught. Octavio pushed past her, leaving the Big House and stepping onto the deck and feeling the cool evening air against his face. He looked over at the Ares and Apollo kids, all sitting on the basketball court, some sporting bloody noses, others pulling arrows from their butts. They were laughing about it now, but he had clearly been aggravated enough that his anger had sparked violence amongst the other campers. </p><p>He was still pretty pissed off, so when he spotted the <em> kobalos—</em>a small, mischievous creature that served to amuse his father—he shouted “Oye!” to get its attention and aimed a kick at its ugly, potato-shaped head, because it was their fault he had met Taejoon today in the first place.</p><p>“Master Silva!” It squeaked, and dug into the ground to avoid being kicked across the field. “You used the scroll?”</p><p>“And summoned some fucking birds, Carlos,” Octavio said, because that was what he had nicknamed it. “That flew to <em> Manhattan.</em>”</p><p>“I thought you liked the city?” Carlos said.</p><p>Instead of answering, Octavio tried kicking it again, and Carlos popped out of sight with a devilish giggle that only made him angrier. One of the Ares kids suddenly shoved an Apollo kid, but before things could escalate Octavio sprinted towards the camp boundaries, not wanting to be told off for being the cause of another fight. Not when everyone was already pretty high-strung from recent events. </p><p>Running his hand through his hair, he decided to head out to the strawberry fields. He had no talent for growing vines like his father and brother, but being in their presence calmed him somewhat, and besides. Free strawberries.</p><p>Plucking a couple that weren’t quite ripe yet into the palm of his hand, he kept glancing over at the bathrooms, wondering if Taejoon was really taking a shower, or if he had lied, and was going to leave him all over again.</p><p>Maybe he really had overreacted, but he couldn't help but feel partially responsible for being the reason Taejoon had left—and if he <em> wasn't </em>the reason Taejoon left, well. He wished he would tell him, so he would have a more valid reason to hate him.</p><p>The tendril of a vine curled itself around his foot, rooting him in one place, before he kicked it free and threw a strawberry at it, causing it to retract. Yeah, vines calmed him, but they still reacted to him like everyone else, so he would have to leave soon.</p><p>And maybe punch Taejoon in his stupid pretty face while he was at it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Octavio first met Taejoon during his second summer at camp. </p><p>Campers had the option of either staying at camp only for the summer and then returning home for the year, or staying at camp all year long. Octavio's first year after that summer camp had been his only year <em>not</em> spent at camp—instead he stayed in his father’s penthouse and the private school he was being forced to attend, half-convinced that the whole summer had been a fever dream.</p><p>Every day he looked at the beaded necklace that had been given to him at the end of August—there was only one bead, with a little purple grape painted onto it. It was apparently camp tradition to pick the most important event of the summer and paint it onto beads for everyone to wear around their necks, and his arrival and all the subsequent disasters that followed were deemed to be the most notable thing that had happened that first summer.</p><p>Ajay's necklace had had two beads on it—two years spent at camp. Elliott's had six, but it made sense because he was an older kid. The person he knew with the most beads was Anita, with ten. He wondered if he would survive long enough to get ten beads as well.</p><p>He longed for Camp Half-Blood the whole school year, but was glad he could use this free time to do whatever the hell he wanted free of consequence. If he got too excited, too into a stunt, and made the crowd drunk with frenzy like he was—well, that could simply be attributed to overexcitement. His powers hadn’t been strong enough back then to like, actually hurt people, so Octavio didn’t feel bad about it at all.</p><p>Mr. Ponderosa has been fired by his father after it was revealed that he was a satyr, but less than a week later he appeared as Octavio's new home ec teacher at school, giving him a wink from beneath the porkpie hat that hid his goat horns from view.</p><p>While he was at school, Taejoon Park had arrived at camp in October, rescued from the maws of a chimera. He had stuck around for two months before going on a quest with Elliott Witt, son of Hephaestus, and Makoa Gibraltar, son of Tyche, into the Underworld—even though the quest hadn’t been allowed by Chiron and Dionysus, he had managed to convince Elliott and Makoa to come with him anyways.</p><p>Though the three had escaped the Underworld alive, they did not manage what Taejoon had wanted to do: get his sister back.</p><p>This had all happened while Octavio was at school, so when he came back to camp and Ajay recounted everything to him, he was mad that he had missed the arrival of a new kid and had not gotten to go on this cool-ass forbidden quest into the Underworld.</p><p>“It ain’t as fun as it sounds,” Ajay said. They were both inside the infirmary, shirtless to show off the things they had gotten while they hadn’t seen one another—Ajay bra inserts and Octavio a binder. “Elliott swears he can’t sleep anymore.”</p><p>“Cool,” Octavio said, awed. “I want to go on a quest! Imagine the shit we could see...the monsters we could fight!"</p><p>“Bug Renee about it,” Ajay said, pulling her orange camp shirt back on. She shook her hair out, purposely twirling a braid around her finger, showing off.</p><p>She had gotten much better at doing her hair—Octavio, meanwhile, had shaved his head back in December when his father hadn’t come home for Christmas, driven by a mixture of impulse and anger that he was once again left on his own. And if his dad’s new secretary had way too much eggnog as a result of those emotions, well...that wasn’t necessarily <em> his </em> fault. He was pretty sure she drank to deal with him.</p><p>“Renee,” Octavio repeated the name, trying to figure out why it sounded familiar, before remembering it in a letter Ajay had written for him on his birthday. “Oh, she’s the new Oracle lady?”</p><p>“Yeah. Completely mortal, but she can see right through the Mist.” Ajay’s eyes narrowed. “What are you <em> doing?</em>”</p><p>He had pulled out what had been his weapon at the time—a little butterfly knife with a syringe full of nectar embedded inside for emergencies—and was cutting his camp shirt in half.</p><p>“Making a crop top! I got a binder now, so..." He pulled the half-shirt over his head, craning his neck down to look at his new style. “What do you think?”</p><p>“You cut off the pegasus’s legs,” Ajay pointed out. “It looks like a potato.”</p><p>And so it did.</p><p>The two parted ways soon after for camp activities—the Apollo cabin had lunch duty, while the Dionysus cabin had to grow strawberries.</p><p>Most cabins had a very evenly set camp schedule so everyone had the chance to do every activity—canoeing, arts and crafts, stable cleaning, et cetera—but Octavio noticed that he and his half-brother had vineyard duty more often than most.</p><p>Which sucked, because he had absolutely no talent for it. He had once tried getting a trapped vine to grow around the trellis that was preventing it from reaching its full potential, and it had instead tried strangling him, which had been <em> really </em> fucking embarassing. So he just let his brother do it while he practiced knife tricks near the lake, smiling and waving at the water nymphs, who giggled beneath the surface.</p><p>Despite what Ajay had said earlier, going into the land of the dead sounded like the sickest shit <em> ever, </em> so Octavio sought out Taejoon Park that night, during the camp’s weekly Capture the Flag game. He had been put on guard duty for the Athena cabin’s flag, deep in the woods, but fuck that, it was <em> boring. </em>He had instead abandoned his post, looking for any unfamiliar faces by climbing into the trees and sweeping his gaze across the campers, looking for someone he didn’t recognize.</p><p>He waved hello to Anita, who was guarding the Ares cabin flag, back straight and shield raised to prevent oncoming Apollo cabin arrows. She aimed her sword at him threateningly, but he merely stuck his tongue out at her and picked his way across Zephyros Creek, butterfly knife in hand in case he got attacked by any monsters.</p><p>It was pretty easy to spot the new kid—he was the only one not actively participating in Capture the Flag (well, besides him), sitting cross-legged on the ground, shield and sword at his feet while he did something on his phone. An Asian kid with black hair that was starting to grow a bit past his shoulders, thick and falling into his eyes, which were squinted at his screen, its brightness at the lowest possible setting.</p><p>“Thought we weren’t allowed to have phones,” Octavio commented, swatting a swarm of mosquitos out of his face.</p><p>The kid looked up at him, blowing his hair out of his eyes. He gave Octavio an unimpressed up-and-down look, taking in his torn shirt, the bronze breastplate over it that was just a little bit big for him, and his shorts that were dirty from climbing trees. “You gonna tell Chiron?”</p><p>“Hell no! You got games on that thing?”</p><p>There was silence for a long moment.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“I think you’re lying to me.”</p><p>“Are you a summer camper?” The kid asked, ignoring Octavio’s accusation. Octavio stuck his knife into the ground, too lazy to put it away properly, and sat across from the other, buzzing with excitement. He liked Capture the Flag nights—well, he liked the race to get the flags, but since he was on guard duty, he’d have to wait until something happened. For now, he could drill the new kid on his quest into hell.</p><p>“Yeah, but I think I’m gonna stay for the year, this time.” It was true—he didn’t care for school, why would he when he could instead be attending a monster-fighting camp? And it wasn’t like his mortal father was going to notice. “I’m Octavio, son of Dionysus. Mr. D? That’s him.”</p><p>“...Taejoon,” the kid said shortly, and his eyes flickered back down to his phone.</p><p>Octavio waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. “Son of..?”</p><p>“I’m unclaimed,” Taejoon said, not looking up.</p><p>Oh. He was. <em> Much </em> younger than Octavio had thought, then. “Well, you’ll be claimed when you’re thir—”</p><p>“I’m sixteen.”</p><p>Octavio paused, before squinting. “<em>Huh?</em>”</p><p>“I said I'm sixteen.” Taejoon got to his feet, kicking his abandoned shield aside. “Leave me alone.”</p><p>And with that, he left Octavio behind, who was confused. How could he be<em> unclaimed? </em> He thought it was a rule that the Olympians had to claim their children by the age of thirteen. The only other unclaimed kid he knew was a ten-year-old who stayed in the Hermes cabin, because Hermes housed travelers, so naturally, all unclaimed children stayed there.</p><p>But everyone else he knew was claimed or at least knew their lineage—Anita, daughter of Ares; Elliott, son of Hephausteus; Natalie, granddaughter of Zeus, and so on. Being unclaimed was <em>rare</em> nowadays.</p><p>His curiosity persisted over the next few days, but it was no longer just about the quest—he wanted to know why the hell this Taejoon kid was unclaimed, how he could be so unwanted that even when there was a rule set in place about it, his godly parent didn’t step forward to claim him as their son. To make matters worse, Ajay told Octavio that he and his sister had been orphans, so they didn’t even know if his godly parent was his mother or father.</p><p>What a life that Taejoon kid must be having, huh? Unwanted at birth by his mortal parent, unwanted at camp by his godly parent, and he couldn’t even get his sister back. He intrigued Octavio, so not even three days after their first meeting he broke into the Hermes cabin to swipe his phone from him while he was sleeping, just so he could look through it and see what kind of person he was.</p><p>Except Taejoon was not sleeping when Octavio picked the lock to get inside (you would <em>think</em> that the god of thieves would have better security). The other boy was wide awake, staring blankly at a laptop, sitting on the floor so that any passing camp counselor or Chiron wouldn’t notice its screen through the cabin windows.</p><p>He looked up when Octavio entered as quietly as he could, though he quickly gave up when he realized that the person he was going to steal from was wide awake.</p><p>Their eyes met in the darkness, Octavio frozen in place, before his eyes darted around to see if any of the other Hermes kids were awake, but they were all sound asleep. </p><p>“...You got games on that?” He asked, trying to break the silence.</p><p>“No,” Taejoon said, slamming it shut. He then reached under his bed and pulled out a long sword that made Octavio’s butterfly knife look like a toothpick. “Go <em> away.</em>”</p><p>So yeah, their first summer together didn’t go too great. Octavio spent the whole time badgering Taejoon for details about pretty much everything going on in his life—who did he think his mom/dad was, what was he using the computer for, how did the Underworld go, how did the chimera thing go.</p><p>He gave up for a short while after Taejoon shoved him off the climbing wall and he had to be rescued from the lake by water nymphs, but he went right back to it after his arm had healed.</p><p>Octavio never really had the opportunity for any one-on-one time with Taejoon, as camp activities often kept them divided, and that aside, the other boy was really good at hiding when he didn’t want to be found.</p><p>Well, at least, not until the spring before Octavio’s third summer, two days after his fifteenth birthday—Renee had collapsed at dinner, when everyone was burning food offerings to their godly parents. Her eyes went opaque and her mouth opened, green mist curling into the air, sprouting from her throat like some ghastly, ghostly snake, and she issued a prophecy for Octavio.</p><p>Nothing<em> too </em> fancy—just a little ‘travel west and stop the mountain giants from trying to take over Colorado blah blah blah’—but she <em> did </em> mention the need for some technical prowess.</p><p>So, for the two companions Octavio was allowed to take on the quest with him, he of course chose Ajay and Taejoon. </p><p>“She meant a Hephaestus kid,” Taejoon growled when Octavio told him he had already asked Chiron if he could accompany him on the quest. “I don’t have any technical prowess.”</p><p>“I watched you softhack a Furby once,” Octavio said.</p><p>Taejoon threw the screwdriver he had been using to tinker with a flip-phone at Octavio, who ducked, cackling loudly.</p><p>In the end Taejoon still showed up at the pine tree that seperated the camp from the mortal world, a duffel in hand and cursing quietly beneath his breath as he was ushered into the car with Octavio and Ajay.</p><p>The good thing about this particular quest was that there wasn’t really an immediate deadline they had to save Colorado by—a vague “by the end of March”, and it was the beginning of the month, so they had at least three weeks to fuck around. And fuck around they did, but by no choice of their own.</p><p>“I think we’re all going to live,” Ajay said about two days later, pulling a golden drachma—the currency of Olympus—from her backpack. The three of them were sitting in the wreckage of a tourist bus that had driven them past a waterpark in Indiana, where a couple of particularly violent water spirits lived, and had tried drowning them when the bus stopped for fuel.</p><p>The good news was: all of the mortals were alive, and had been ushered to safety by emergency services. The bad news was: Octavio, Ajay, and Taejoon had single handedly caused the destruction of one of the biggest waterparks in America.</p><p>“I can’t feel my leg,” Taejoon said, soaked to the bone and laying on the pavement.</p><p>“You want nectar?” Octavio asked, digging into his backpack for his butterfly knife. He had gotten a brand new knife right before leaving camp—thirteen inches long, double-sided and with a nasty point—but still kept his butterfly knife for its emergency supply of nectar.</p><p>“Just because you’re a weirdo who can handle having nectar injected directly into your veins, doesn’t mean everyone else can,” Ajay said, Taejoon rolling out of Octavio’s reach with a long-suffering sigh. “I’ve got ambrosia squares, give me a second.”</p><p>She approached a broken pipe that used to be connected to an extremely tall waterslide. It was shooting out a torrent of water, but some fine mist was sprayed into the air, creating a rainbow beneath the sunlight. She tossed the golden drachma into the rainbow, and said,</p><p>“Oh Iris, goddess of the rainbow, please accept my offering.”</p><p>The rainbow seemed to glow brighter. “Show me Camp Half-Blood.”</p><p>The rainbow shimmered for a moment, as if buffering, before showing the sky-blue Big House that resided on camp grounds, a couple of campers cleaning up the wreckage of what looked like a chariot race gone wrong. Octavio turned away from Ajay’s Iris message, where he could hear her catching Anita up on what was going on so far in the quest. He pulled out a plastic baggie with ambrosia squares inside—they looked like little blocks of jello, and shook them in front of Taejoon, who was staring at the sky, face white.</p><p>“I think it’s broken,” he said, ignoring Octavio. “I can’t feel it at all.”</p><p>“Take one,” Octavio said. “It’ll heal you. Probably.”</p><p>“This is your fucking fault,” Taejoon groaned, continuing to ingore the ambrosia, and he brought his hand up to block his face from the rays of the sun. “Fuck, if I die—”</p><p>"You’re being dramatic! <em> I’m </em> the son of the theater god, not you. Get it together.”</p><p>“I <em> could </em> be a son of the theater god. I wouldn’t know, because I’m fucking unclaimed!” Taejoon slammed one fist down on the hot pavement as sirens wailed in the distance, ambulances coming to see if anyone needed to be rescued from the soaking wreckage of the waterpark. “I shouldn’t be here, doing this stupid quest. I should be finding out who I am.”</p><p>“I mean, if it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have figured out how to operate that crane machine back there,” Octavio said gently in the face of the other’s anger—a foreign feeling to him, but he really could not afford to have the other panic right now. He was pretty sure that if they stuck around any longer, they would be taken in for questioning by the police.</p><p>“I hate you,” the other boy said. His shoulders were starting to shake, from either panic or pain or a mixture of both. “I’m tired of being attacked. I’m tired of all this god shit. I want to go home.”</p><p>He’d heard that sentiment before—everyone at camp knew they had to stay, whether it be because their home life wasn’t that great or they would attract monsters to their loved ones. Nobody <em> wanted </em> to be a demigod; it was dangerous, and put everyone you knew at risk because of your mere existence. He was just surprised to hear these words coming from Taejoon Park, who had seemed largely unbothered by everything before now.</p><p>Octavio touched Taejoon’s shoulder, trying to get his attention so that he could at least force an ambrosia square down his throat to heal him up, but something strange happened—the other boy relaxed, sobs quieting into the occasional sniffle. Eyes wide, Octavio looked back at Ajay to see if she had seen what he’d done, but she was busy getting chewed out by Anita for having blown up a waterpark.</p><p>Taejoon was calm enough to sit up now, red eyes staring at his twisted knee, rubbing at his snotty nose with his jacket sleeve. He took the bag of ambrosia from Octavio with a quiet ‘thanks’ and ate two at once, chewing slowly with a glazed look in his eyes.</p><p>“Um.” Octavio wasn’t quite sure what had just happened, but he was a little wary. “You good?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Taejoon nodded, voice quiet. He gave the plastic bag back and said, without further elaboration, “I think I’m going to pass out.”</p><p>And he did.</p><p>The three of them spent five days in Jefferson City, spoon-feeding Taejoon more ambrosia to speed up the healing of his leg, helped along by the fact that Ajay had a particular talent for medicine, what with her dad being Apollo and all.</p><p>They had gotten a room all the way at the top of a major chain hotel, Ajay and Octavio both invoking their respective families' names to earn themselves room service and a suite. They were also the only occupants on that floor, which was good, because at this point in his life, Octavio’s powers had started ramping up in intensity.</p><p>Taejoon and Octavio didn’t acknowledge what had happened back at the waterpark, in part because neither of them had any <em>idea</em> what had happened. The older boy went right back to calling the younger 'annoying’, ‘overdramatic’ and ‘crazy’, which the son of Dionysus took in stride.</p><p>Towards the end of their quest, though, the two had a little moment together. Tied to stalagmites in a cave near Breckenridge, Colorado, listening to Ajay single-handedly beat the ass of giants using the power of music to cause a fucking avalanche, Taejoon said, “If we die, I am <em> so </em>haunting you in the Underworld.”</p><p>Octavio, who was bleeding profusely from his mouth due to a knocked tooth, said, “Aw, you wanna spend your afterlife with me?”</p><p>“I’ve gotten so used to your stupid face, I can’t imagine not seeing it in death, too,” Taejoon sighed. His glasses were lying about ten feet away from them, broken in half, lenses shattered. Octavio thought he looked really cute without them. “If we survive this—<em>if</em>—I’ll let you play on my computer if you promise to never bother me ever again.”</p><p>“Deal,” Octavio said, and because both of their hands were tied, knocked their ankles against one another’s in a mock hand-shake. </p><p>Ajay soon came to their rescue, covered in monster dust and powdered rock, giving them both ambrosia to help Octavio’s tooth regrow and Taejoon’s shoulder set back into its socket. They then bought plane tickets back to New York, and the three of them slept through the entire flight, heads on each other’s shoulders and smelling faintly like moss.</p><p>At camp, they were paraded around on the shoulders of everyone else, and their funeral shrouds (painted as a precaution in case they died on their quest) were burned at dinner, which Octavio found morbidly hilarious. In fact, his excitement was so infectious that Chiron had to call for Dionysus to make it stop, and they all got scolded for trying to create makeshift fireworks out of the Apollo cabin’s arrows.</p><p>After that, Octavio dragged Taejoon back to the Hermes cabin, forcing him onto the bed and saying, “Computer. Now.”</p><p>“You’re so annoying,” he responded, but dug it out from his bedside draw anyways, booting it up while Octavio grinned beside him, excited. Hey, he hadn’t touched a cell phone in nearly a year—<em>you </em>try going that long without a single video game.</p><p>They spent three hours playing Skyrim together, a third of that focused solely on character creation.</p><p>“This is our son,” Octavio said, looking at the horrible<em> thing </em> he had created.</p><p>“No son of mine is having green hair,” Taejoon replied, disgusted. </p><p>“I thought you liked green?”</p><p>“I have standards.”</p><p>“I wanna dye my hair green, so his hair is green. Deal with it, amigo.”</p><p>“Absolutely not.”</p><p>The door to the Hermes cabin flew open and Elliott entered, twirling a wrench in hand. He spotted the two of them on the floor, both their eyes wide, their hands placed on the computer and fighting for control over the character creator. There was a long stretch of silence.</p><p>“How’d you get that in here without Chiron kicking your ass?” The oldest boy asked, gesturing to the laptop.</p><p>“None of your business,” Taejoon snapped. “What do you want?”</p><p>“It’s dinner time.”</p><p>“We ate hamburgers on the way back. Leave us alone.”</p><p>“Lucky,” Elliott moaned, but left shortly thereafter. It wasn’t that the camp food was bad, but there was only so much brisket, bread, and fruit one could handle every day.</p><p>The two looked at one another, their hearts beating in their chests at the fact that they had almost been caught with one of the most dangerous things a demigod could have.</p><p>“Isn’t it weird,” Taejoon began, pulling the laptop onto his lap so he could change their character’s hair to a less horrendous shade of green, “That we’re more scared of getting caught with a computer than we were of getting drowned by demons?"</p><p>“I dunno, dude, you were pretty freaked out at that waterpark.”</p><p>The setting sun washed the inside of the Hermes cabin with a burning orange, illuminating the amount of stuff inside—stolen knicknacks, letters from home nobody had had the heart to throw away yet, discarded orange shirts and haphazardly stored weapons. They messed around on Skyrim for a bit more, the opening cutscene playing before Taejoon said,</p><p>“Thanks for that, by the way.”</p><p>Octavio was puzzled. “Huh?”</p><p>“You did something back there. Got my head back on my shoulders.” Taejoon pointedly focused on a cobwebbed corner of the cabin, jaw set firmly. “...so thanks.”</p><p>Octavio blinked, before a wide grin spread across his face, and he nudged the other with his elbow. “Are we friends now?”</p><p>“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Taejoon scoffed.</p><p>“It sounds like we’re friends now.”</p><p>“Seriously, we’re not.”</p><p>“Maybe you’re right—look at our horrible green son. We’ve bypassed the friend stage. We’re <em> married </em> now.”</p><p>Taejoon scoffed again, but Octavio swore he saw a little smile on his face, and thought to himself that he would have to make it appear more often.</p><hr/><p>Dinner that night was fun, presumably. Mostly everyone celebrated the return of Taejoon, whom people thought dead after his disappearance four years ago. Makoa even sent an Iris message to Elliott at home, and Elliott broke into tears at the sight of him, but to be fair to the guy, he’d had a rough three months, what with Anita and his brothers being gone all at once.</p><p>Octavio watched bitterly from the table, two slices of bread shoved into his mouth, as the other campers scraped a portion of their food into bright burning fires, thanking the gods for Taejoon’s return, and praying for Anita to come back as well.</p><p>He hadn’t offered his food—hadn’t done so in years, because the people who burned their food didn’t get to see their godly parent regularly like he did—but even campers who normally only offered food once a week were scraping the ripest fruits or juiciest slices of brisket into the fires, celebrating.</p><p>“Isn’t he your friend?” His half-brother, Pollux, asked. They didn’t talk to each other that much.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Octavio answered, watching Natalie attempt to squeeze the life out of Taejoon in a hug. “It’s been a while.”</p><p>He then looked at his empty glass, and said, “Monster.”</p><p>It magically filled itself to the brim with the energy drink, and Pollux snubbed his nose in disgust, but didn’t say anything else, which Octavio was thankful for. He glared at Taejoon from a distance, taking in his new appearance—he had showered, changed clothes, and even cut his hair, his new haircut showing the sharp line of his jaw and the scar he hadn’t noticed beside his eye.</p><p>The transition from shaggy black hair often combed in the wrong direction to a sleeker, shorter cut was jarring, but it suited him. His orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt was stretched across his chest, which had gotten a little broader since the last time Octavio had seen him, but he wasn’t focused on that.</p><p>The fact that he was wearing the camp shirt at all felt like a cruel joke, a spit in his face after he had been told that the other wouldn’t be staying for long.</p><p>It made him want to tear off his own shirt—cut in half into a crop-top, like all his other shirts—but he just clenched his teeth and sipped his Monster quietly, mirroring his father, who was doing the same to another can of Diet Coke. He was glad in this moment that his less extreme emotions weren’t felt by others,; if the rest of the campers could feel his bitterness, he was sure there would be questions as to why, and he didn’t feel like airing out his <em>drama</em>, as Dionysus had put it.</p><p>They had a bonfire that night, which Octavio was usually the star of. The fire reacted to the spirit of the campers, so having a demigod whose own emotions amplified that of others’ was handy—but he just wasn’t feeling it, so he stood away from everyone else, watching Chiron stomp his hooves and announce Taejoon’s return, as well as the fact that they would be playing Capture the Flag tomorrow.</p><p>He left early, making his way to the Dionysus cabin, where the vines seemed more entangled than usual; a dark, threatening mass.</p><p>His dad was standing outside of it, but not the middle-aged man he normally appeared to be—he looked much more godlike, young with carved features, wearing a toga and a leopard skin draped around his shoulders. Octavio blinked, and the illusion disappeared. Sleepy purple eyes blinked at him, shadowed and surrounded by lines that showed not even a fraction of his true age.</p><p>“It’s Tuesday,” Dionysus commented, and Octavio grit his teeth.</p><p>“I’m not in the mood,” he said, averting his gaze down to his metal feet.</p><p>“Which is precisely why you should practice. Do you think I do this for my own enjoyment, boy?” Dionysus cracked his neck with a sigh. “But I suppose nobody would be in the mood after they got abandoned again.”</p><p>A cold feeling instilled itself inside his stomach—he knew what the god was doing, but it was making him angry anyway. Clenching his teeth, he forced himself to try and relax, but it was hard.</p><p>“Shut up," he said.</p><p>“You’re right. I was mistaken. You haven’t been abandoned—he’s back, after all. You’re just still unwanted.”</p><p>"Shut. <em> Up. </em> Dad."</p><p>Dionysus clicked his tongue in disappointment, circling him like a predator would its prey. Octavio had never been scared of his father like other campers were, but he would be a fool to not be cautious of the other right now.</p><p>"Are you so weak that you'll let your emotions plague everyone else? This drama that<em> you </em> created, that <em> you </em>continue to let ruin everyone else's lives? That they must be put on hold for you, the selfish little hero, who wants all eyes on him?"</p><p>Fury welled up in his chest, and he raised his hands to cover his ears, as if that would prevent his father from reading his mind, staring right into his soul. “Fuck <em> off, </em>I don’t want to deal with this.”</p><p>“Park didn’t want to deal with it, either.” Dionysus gave a yawn, as if he were bored. It pissed him the fuck off. “It’s probably why he left this silly camp.”</p><p>“Stop.” The vines above Dionysus’s head wriggled, as if agitated.</p><p>"Everyone moves on, but you remain in the past. <em>It's all about</em> <em>me, </em>and, <em>wahhh I want attention. </em>Not even my own children are exempt from being fools."</p><p>His face was red now. He was angry at Dionysus, but mostly angry at himself, at the fact that he was letting the god get to him even though they'd done this a hundred times at least.</p><p>“This is precisely why nobody wants to deal with you.” Dionysus pushed away from the wall as the vines reacted to those words too, slinking downwards like a snake ready to pounce. “Not your father, not the daughter of Apollo, and certainly not Pa-”</p><p>“Shut the fuck <em> up!</em>” Octavio yelled, face heated with anger, and the vines around him exploded into action, growing in size.</p><p>It all happened so fast that he barely registered what was going on—his father swiped his hand through the air as the vines clawed their way towards him like some sort of horrific, writhing monster, and they all fell to the ground, cut away from the cabin. They faded into dust, blown away by the evening wind, and filling the air with the perfume of strawberries.</p><p>“That didn’t quite sound like you were trying to calm down,” Dionysus commented after a moment’s heated silence. Octavio didn't respond, glaring at his father with his fists clenched at his side. He hadn't felt this angry in a long while—not since he was seventeen, engaged in a shouting match with his mortal dad for reasons he didn't even remember.</p><p>"How are you going to control yourself if you act like a child?" Dionysus asked, in a snobbish sort of manner. </p><p>“I <em> said </em>I wasn’t in the mood,” Octavio spat, but felt embarrassed that he had allowed his father’s purposeful needling to get to him.</p><p>"Taehyung certainly wasn't in the mood, either."</p><p>"Tae<em>joon.</em>"</p><p>Dionysus smirked, as if he'd won. "And you still care for him, despite it all."</p><p>“If the others kill each other because of me, it’s your fault," Octavio said, choosing to ignore his father's words and the hot feeling that burned at the back of his neck because of them.</p><p>“They’ll be fine,” Dionysus said dismissively. A pained shriek rang through the air, followed by a shout of <em> ‘S’MORES FIGHT!’. </em> “Or perhaps not. Go to bed, Silva.”</p><p>“Gladly,” Octavio said, and slammed the cabin door behind him. The vines in here too had formed the same angry mass around his bed as they had outside, but when he laid down they slowly crept away, as if giving him his space. He wished he had better control over them so he could make them go away entirely. No sooner had this thought crossed his mind did a knock sound on his cabin door.</p><p>Wondering what the fuck Dionysus could want now, he got to his feet and threw open the door with a stilted “what do you <em> want</em>” on the tip of his tongue that was swallowed as soon as he saw who it was.</p><p>Taejoon blinked. “Sorry. Were you about to go to bed?”</p><p>“No,” Octavio said. He tried to appear much more collected than he actually was—he didn’t want the other to know he was getting to him with his infuriating <em> everything</em>—but it was hard. “Why?”</p><p>“I just wanted to talk. About why I left.”</p><p>He was torn between two different wants—the want for information, for a valid reason to hate Taejoon, and the want to be petty. The want to be petty won out, and he said,</p><p>“Save it for someone who cares.”</p><p>“Octavio,” Taejoon said, and ran his hand through his hair, a nervous gesture he hadn’t gotten rid of even after a haircut. “You have to understand, I—”</p><p>“Shut up,” Octavio cut him off.</p><p>“You’re being immature.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, I was about to go to bed.”</p><p>“You just said you weren’t,” Taejoon pointed out, his lips turning up at the corners in that same damn <em>smile</em> that still made his stomach do funny things, even after four years of anger and sadness and grief. “So which is it?”</p><p>“I’m going to bed.” Octavio wished he was taller so that he could intimidate the man away, but what he lacked in height, he had in dangerous Celestial bronze legs. “If you don’t leave me alone, I will kick you in the knee and break it.”</p><p>Taejoon exhaled deeply, lips set in a line like he wanted to say more, but was biting his tongue. The two stared each other down for a while, until Taejoon turned his back on him and left without saying anything else.</p><p>Octavio watched him head towards cabin eleven with the other Hermes kids, and he was reminded of the fact that they were playing Capture the Flag tomorrow, and that the Hermes cabin had one of those flags. If Taejoon was playing, then...</p><p>Maybe he could have an outlet for his anger.</p><hr/><p>When he turned eighteen, he was in the city. He had decided to see his mortal father one last time, mostly at Ajay’s insistence that they reach some sort of closure with one another after years of neglect and despising each other. He’d taken an elevator all the way up to his father’s office, walking past his dad’s secretary with his knife in hand. She screamed for help, but he paid her no mind, barging into the room without knocking.</p><p>His father was having a video conference at his large, sleek desk, piled with neat paperwork. A golden plaque displaying his name was perched at the edge, shiny as if he polished it every day. His walls were lined with awards and thank-you notes from businesses praising him for the amount of time, money, and effort he spent on investing in them, when he could have been spending time with his son instead. But it was whatever. The past was in the past, and Octavio would be cutting all ties with it today.</p><p>Kishou Silva glanced up at him, an eyebrow raised beneath the fringe of his salt-and-pepper hair. His gaze went from serious to horrified in a split second, so fast that it was almost comical.</p><p>“Hey dad,” Octavio said in Spanish. He heard his father’s business partner asking in English what was wrong, but his father didn’t answer, having pushed away from his desk as far as his rolling chair would allow him to.</p><p>Octavio placed the gorgon’s head he had kept as a trophy onto his father’s desk—he’d encountered her at his favorite burrito stand this morning, and though he had gouged her eyes out so that she couldn’t petrify anyone, she was still pretty scary. “It’s my birthday today.”</p><p>“Al—Aleja—”</p><p>“It’s Octavio,” he cut his father off. It was really quite inexcusable for that name to still be used, being one year on testosterone. The snakes on the gorgon’s head were still alive, and one snapped at his father ferociously with a hiss, as if sensing his frustration. “Anyways, I’m going to be living at Camp Half-Blood permanently, now. I’m going home to collect all my stuff. If you try to get your security guards to stop me, I’ll put their heads on your desk instead.”</p><p>“Wait,” his father stuttered, obviously in terror of the thirteen inch blade in his hand. “We don’t—let’s talk this out—”</p><p>“Nah.” Octavio switched to English suddenly, and raised his voice theatrically. “Hey dad, how come you’re not wearing any pants?”</p><p>“Excuse me?” He heard his father’s business partner say, scandalized, and the call ended. Kishou passed out then, foaming at the mouth in terror. Whatever. His secretary could call the hospital.</p><p>Octavio left his father’s office, knife still in hand, but froze in front of the elevator at the scene before him. The security guards were either rolling on the ground, having a seizure, or clawing at their own faces, screaming at the top of their lungs. His father’s secretary had shoved her phone and computer off of her desk, paperwork scattered everywhere, not helped by the fan that was blowing them into the corners of the room. The woman herself was standing at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, desperately trying to open it.</p><p>“Hey,” Octavio called, his stomach dropping. “Hey, lady, what’re you doing?”</p><p>She didn’t respond to him, just kept screaming and pounding at the glass. Octavio moved forward, trying to get to her to prevent her from doing whatever the fuck she was trying to do, but he tripped over one of the security guards and fell forward, knife clattering out of his grip onto the floor.</p><p>The secretary managed to get the window open, and without further ado, jumped out.</p><p>Octavio felt his heart stop—they were on the fifty-first floor. There was no possible way she could survive that...!</p><p>He scrambled to his feet,  sprinting towards the window and peering down, eyes wide. Gods, where did she go? Why weren’t there people screaming? Didn’t they notice a body rocketing towards them from up high?</p><p>He then realized that a lumpy mass was rising in the air towards him, and he backed away, almost tripping again.</p><p>Dionysus floated himself through the window, the secretary passed out in his arms. He set her none-too-gently down on the floor and scanned the room with his bright eyes, purplish with power. He waved one hand, and in what seemed like slow-motion, everything reset itself to normal. The security guards stood up like nothing had happened and walked nonchalantly away. The secretary got to her feet, adjusted her glasses, and sat herself at her desk, paying no mind to the fact that she had spilled her coffee all over it.</p><p>“Dad—” Octavio began, nervous, but his father cut him off.</p><p>“Wait.”</p><p>A hand placed itself on his shoulder, and the next thing he knew, he was standing in the middle of Kishou’s penthouse, in front of his room. It looked exactly the same as he had left it the last time he visited, his birthday the year previous. Dionysus stepped away from him, in a new form now—younger, handsomer, godly.</p><p>"Listen, back there—" He began, wary of his father's change in appearance, but he was interrupted.</p><p>“I’m sure by now you’ve realized you don’t have the same powers as your brother." Dionysus ran his finger along the banister that led up to Octavio’s room, eyes flickering around the penthouse. When he pulled his finger away, the tip was covered in dust. “And if you haven’t, well, you aren’t very bright.”</p><p>“I didn’t mean to do that,” Octavio rushed out, afraid he was about to get turned into, like, a dolphin or something. “I don’t know what happened.”</p><p>Because he didn’t. Octavio had not, up until that point, experienced <em> true </em> madness. He knew all those myths about his father sparking insanity in those he hated, those who did him wrong, but he had thought that as a demigod, his powers would be a lot more minor. Yeah, he made people over-excited sometimes, or made them angry, but he thought that was the extent of them. He didn't think he could do <em> all that.</em></p><p>“If you would let me talk, I could explain it to you,” Dionysus said, and Octavio kept his mouth shut, watching his father expectantly.</p><p>“I am the god of many things. Wine, theater, festivity, religious ecstasy. My children and I have always had a fondness for getting drunk.” When Octavio opened his mouth to protest, his father raised his hand to silence him. “Not just on alcohol. Drunk on art. Drunk on power. Drunk on adrenaline, in your case. The addiction you have to experiencing highs and rushes is a product of who I am."</p><p>Was that what it was, then? He had always thought that the want to fight monsters and experience near-death were simply his demigod instincts in play. Everyone in camp had dyslexia and ADHD because their brains were hardwired for Greek and their bodies were made for battle, so he had assumed this was a universal experience. </p><p>“Most of my children’s power is focused on the vine, not on the mind. They can calm people down, yes, but you have inherited the more...emotional side of my powers.” Dionysus gestured to the windows, which were floor-to-ceiling, just like the ones back at his father’s office, and he flinched remembering his father's secretary pounding at the windows.</p><p>“You generate frenzy," Dionysus continued. "You get drunk on adrenaline and infect others with madness that you don’t know how to control or stop—and even when you aren’t drunk, your emotions still affect people because it is who you are hardwired to be. Someone who induces insanity. Someone who <em> is </em>a little bit insane.”</p><p>“Thanks, dad,” Octavio murmured.</p><p>“I try,” Dionysus responded dryly. He snapped his fingers, and a Diet Coke can materialized on the banister next to his other hand.</p><p>For a moment it was like Octavio could see through his illusion; see the older man with curly black hair and a beer belly, a lined face and five o'clock shadow. But then he blinked and the image righted itself, back to the Hercules-like guy before him. “Anyway, I’m telling you all of this because my father, Zeus, has informed me that if I don’t get you under control, he’ll take care of you himself.”</p><p>“Zeus?” Octavio asked, eyes wide. The king of gods? <em>Really</em>? That guy? That would be so fucking awes—</p><p>“He’d electrocute you where you stand, I’m sure.”</p><p>Well nevermind, then.</p><p>“And I’d rather not have one of my only sons die just yet. You have your uses.” Dionysus drained the soda in a couple of gulps, tossing the crumpled can into a trashbin across the house. He missed and it cluttered to the ground, which Octavio felt was done on purpose. “What is today?”</p><p>“Tuesday.”</p><p>“Every Tuesday, then, I’ll teach you how to keep your emotions from driving others up the wall. You’d save me a headache or two.” Dionysus fixed him with a look, as if analyzing him, and he squirmed uncomfortably.</p><p>Before this point, Octavio had never really talked to his father much. He ran the camp unwillingly, and seemed to despise every demigod who set foot inside. He was gone oftentimes, on Olympus doing his godly duties, and when he was at camp he was either drinking himself stupid with diet sodas or playing Pac-Man for so long that they had to unplug the machine to reset the scores because the leaderboard was entirely him.</p><p>He had always gotten the impression that he was an unwanted child, especially after learning that the reason Dionysus didn’t have many kids was because he had a wife on Olympus that he was still quite loyal to.</p><p>But now here he was, telling Octavio that he would help him reign in his emotions so he wouldn’t cause what he had back there. It had shaken him, what he was capable of, but it was actually kind of cool now that he thought about it. How useful could it be if he could turn that ability on in battle? Maybe Dionysus wouldn’t be such a lame god, after all.</p><p>“I’ve had enough,” Dionysus said suddenly. “Pack your things. If you’re not back at camp by curfew, you’ll have stable-cleaning duty for a week.”</p><p>“But—but we’re so far from my dad’s office,” Octavio realized. “I can’t carry all this stuff without my bike.”</p><p>“Sounds like a you problem,” his father said, unaffected. Asshole.</p><p>Before Dionysus could disappear, however, a question sprung up in his mind, and he blurted out, “Wait!”</p><p>When purple eyes met his, he stuttered a little, realizing just how awkward the question was. “Um...I just wanna know, why my dad? Like, he’s an asshole. Why did you...hook up with him, or whatever.”</p><p>Dionysus squinted. “I should stuff you into a bottle of Merlot for that.”</p><p>“Please don’t,” Octavio said.</p><p>“...I met him at a midnight showing of the <em> Cats </em> musical,” Dionysus said, as if deciding that the answer would horrify Octavio enough as punishment. “My wife has no love for theater, so when I met someone just as passionate as me about <em> Cats, </em> I had to have him. He was wearing a pair of cat ears and a tail.”</p><p>“That’s awful,” Octavio said, almost gagging at the thought.</p><p>“You’re welcome.” </p><p>And with that, Dionysus vanished.</p><p>Octavio packed up as much as he could into two large suitcases. His video game system, his TV, clothes that he liked and his bedsheets. He dragged out all the dresses and blouses he hadn’t worn in years and shoved them into the fireplace, watching with satisfaction as they burned. He then entered his father’s room and purposely trashed the place, jumping on his bed to leave grimy, monster-dust footprints on his pristine white sheets.</p><p>When he had had his fun, he called a taxi to take him to his dad’s building, where he retrieved his bike from the parking garage. He saw his dad’s secretary staggering down the sidewalk, clearly unsteady on her feet, and almost felt bad about it, but he shrugged it off and started the three hour drive to Montauk.</p><p>Back at camp he shoved his suitcases into his cabin before looking around for Taejoon, wanting to tell him what had happened today, but he didn’t see him anywhere. He wasn’t in the Hermes cabin, where he normally was if he didn’t have to do any activities. He wasn’t in the Big House, either. He asked Elliott, Ajay, and Makoa if they had seen him, but they all shook their heads no, so he made his way into the woods, knife in hand.</p><p>Sometimes Taejoon hung out in there if he didn’t want to be found, which Octavio thought was fine. Being at risk of almost getting killed by monsters every moment was fun, so sometimes he walked through the woods to put himself on edge, but right now he needed to tell Taejoon everything, so he searched impatiently, looking up trees and calling out the other’s name occasionally.</p><p>He eventually found the other man near Zephyros Creek, laying on a log above the streaming water, staring up at the sky with glazed eyes. When Octavio approached he glanced at him but didn’t say anything.</p><p>“Hola,” Octavio greeted, excited to tell him what had happened.</p><p>“Hmm,” Taejoon hummed. “What?”</p><p>He recounted everything that had happened—being attacked by that gorgon, bringing her severed head to his father’s office, the ensuing madness, and his talk with Dionysus. Taejoon listened, eyes focused and steady on Octavio, but as soon as he finished up they glazed again and went back to staring at the sky.</p><p>“That’s nice,” he mumbled, and sounded strangely bitter about it.</p><p>Sensing that something was wrong, Octavio sat on the log next to his friend, kicking his shoes off so that he could dip his feet into the water. “Everything okay?”</p><p>“Same as usual,” Taejoon said impassively.</p><p>“Yeah, but you don’t normally lay on logs.”</p><p>Taejoon didn’t respond this time. Just kept staring, and Octavio watched him long enough to realize that he was repeatedly clenching and unclenching his jaw, as if angry. “Hey man, what’s—”</p><p>“I asked for a quest today.”</p><p>Octavio blinked. “And?”</p><p>“It got denied.”</p><p>“I thought you hated quests,” Octavio said. They had gone on one two months ago with Anita, and Taejoon had spent half of it passed out because he’d gotten hit in the head with a rock after a hydra had buried him inside a cave. Long story. </p><p>“I asked to go to the Underworld again.” Taejoon took a deep breath, as if steadying himself. “They said no.”</p><p>Ah. That.</p><p>Octavio knew the other’s sister Mila was either dead or had been taken away. He didn’t know the exact details; Taejoon didn’t like talking about it, but Octavio knew that he was passing the time by forming a plan to rescue his sister. He had seen what the other was doing on his computer—researching the legends of every person in Greek mythology who had ever brought someone back from the Underworld, and he had even gone out of his way on other quests to talk to people personally about it.</p><p>He didn’t think the other would ask about it, though, not after his not-allowed and unsuccessful quest in his first year.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Octavio said, not really knowing what to say. He wasn't terribly good at comforting people, despite whatever his father had said about curing madness.</p><p>“And I’ve decided something.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>Taejoon sat up, the glazed look in his eyes turning into something else. Something harder. “I want vengeance.”</p><p>Silence followed, punctured only by the sound of the creek running below them. Octavio stared at his friend, eyes wide, as he tried to process that. Finally, he asked, “...What?”</p><p>“Revenge. On everyone.” Taejoon got to his feet, boots splashing in the water as he took his jacket off, shaking wood splinters out of it.</p><p>"Why?"</p><p>“Nobody has ever wanted me. I’m unclaimed. Why should I fight for Olympus, when nobody wanted to come forward and say I’m their son? The gods let my sister be taken away from me, and they won’t even give me the chance to get her back. I hate it all.”</p><p>As he spoke, his words got quieter, angrier, and all Octavio could do was laugh nervously, because <em> What? </em></p><p>“Dionysus talking to you just reminded me that I don’t have what everyone else has. I’m the only unclaimed demigod, now. I’ve never been issued a prophecy of my own. I don’t have any powers. I’m someone nobody wants, and they—” Taejoon took a deep breath, as if calming his nerves. “—they won’t even let me have who <em> I </em> want. I want my <em> real </em> family back. Not this stupid Olympus shit. So I’m getting revenge on the gods. I’ll play as sick of a joke on them as they’re playing on me.”</p><p>“How?” Octavio asked. Taejoon shrugged, looking back at him with burning eyes.</p><p>“I don’t know yet.”</p><p>The silence lapsed once again. Octavio didn’t know how to respond to all of that, if he should or not. He remembered thinking to himself four years ago that Taejoon had it rough—orphaned at birth, no powers, unclaimed, and a dead(?) sister to top it all off—but he thought the other man had been slowly getting over it. Moving on.</p><p>Now though, he felt like his recounting of the day’s events had only rubbed salt in the wound that had been secretly festering beneath the surface this whole time.</p><p>Finally, Octavio stood up and approached Taejoon, who flinched away from him, as if expecting to be hit. Instead Octavio wrapped his arms around him awkwardly, not used to giving hugs.</p><p>“But we’re family, right?” He asked. He was afraid of the answer—he had cut ties with his father, and though he acted unaffected, it hurt him deep down. He had only wanted to have a normal family as a child, and to be neglected so thoroughly his whole life had taken a toll on him that he tried not to disclose to others. He didn’t think he could handle Taejoon, after these past few years, lumping him in with everyone else and directing his anger at him, too. </p><p>He felt the other move stiffly, and was afraid he would be shoved off. Instead, a hand placed itself on his waist, and Taejoon hugged him back, just as awkwardly.</p><p>“Yeah,” the other responded, voice rumbling in his chest. He had relaxed, and for that Octavio was glad. "We are.”</p><p>“You aren’t going to leave, are you?”</p><p>“No. But if I did, I’d have you come with me.” He heard the laugh in the other’s voice. “I could use those crazy people powers of yours.”</p><p>“We’d have to invite Ajay too. So she could be our healer.”</p><p>“I don’t think she’d like that.”</p><p>“We can’t leave her behind, though. Elliott too, we could use that stupid big head of his. Makoa maybe, his luck would come in handy. Hey, you think Nat would—”</p><p>“Okay, you’re getting ahead of yourself,” Taejoon laughed, pushing him off. “I just said I’m not leaving.”</p><p>“Alright.” Octavio smiled. “Promise?”</p><p>Taejoon smiled back, just a little, and a weird squirming feeling took place in Octavio’s chest. He placed his hand on top of Octavio's, touch gentle despite the anger that had taken hold of his tone thirty seconds ago.</p><p>“Promise.”</p><p>“Good,” he said, and grabbed the other by his jacket sleeve. “Come help me unpack, man, I brought my Switch. Let’s play Splatoon!”</p><p>They made their way back to the Dionysus cabin, slayed a monster on the way there, and spent several hours playing video games in secret. Taejoon laughed and smiled and relaxed, like he hadn't just declared revenge on all of those who had made him suffer these past few years.</p><p>The conversation they had about leaving was pushed to the back of Octavio’s mind, and when he woke up the next morning, he had forgotten about it already.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>this chapter was so goddamn long i split it up so this is in 3 parts. enjoy !</p><p>also sorry if this seems more au than cryptane. the specific request was a pjo au and a little cryptane sprinkled inside if i wanted to ! ive made them plot relevant but it is mostly AU ówò</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this isn't beta'd sorry LMAO</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Capture the Flag was, at first glance, a simple game.</p><p>Two cabins had a flag, decorated to look like their god. The cabins who had won the past couple of Capture the Flag games, Ares and Athena, would be the leaders of their teams. They would pick other cabins to join their side, hide their flags in the woods and set up guards to protect them, and try to capture the other team’s flag. </p><p>Whatever camper captured a flag would be team leader next time—it would change to that camper’s god, like if the Apollo cabin captured the Ares flag for example, then the next Capture the Flag game would be Apollo versus Athena.</p><p>Simple stuff. Or so you would think.</p><p>The Dionysus cabin had been picked for Athena’s team, because while the Ares and Athena cabins had the flag most of the time, there were many games where Octavio would capture the flag first, being small and speedy, so he was an asset to the team that picked him. He was rarely on guard duty nowadays, every other camper recognizing that he was one of the fastest, which was good—he wanted to be alone when he sought out Taejoon.</p><p>The Ares kids had picked the Hermes cabin for their team, though their hearts didn’t seem to be in it. Probably because of Anita’s disappearance.</p><p>Athena’s kids were a bunch of brainiacs—strategizers and planners. He had to listen to a five minute lecture from one of the younger campers, telling him every detail of her foolproof plan, but as soon as the game started, he disregarded all of it and set out to do his own thing.</p><p>He was in his usual attire for these games—orange shirt cut into a crop-top, jean shorts, a light metal breastplate to prevent himself from getting fucking impaled, and the sheath for his knife on his thigh. The blade itself was currently in his hand in case he got attacked by any monsters, but they weren’t his priority at the moment. Finding Taejoon was.</p><p>There weren’t any rules on where the flags should be hidden, but it was generally agreed upon that they be placed upon opposite sides of Zephyros creek. Jumping over the stream of water, he was now officially in enemy territory.</p><p>Sprinting through the thick growth in the woods, he was able to maneuver over bulging tree roots and thick tree trunks easily, eleven years of practice making him agile and unstoppable. Tree nymphs watched him run, giggling to themselves and waving at him as he passed by, but he paid them no mind. He spotted Makoa’s hulking frame—currently the oldest demigod at camp, with Anita and Elliott being gone—and took a sharp left. Makoa, being a son of Tyche, had a certain amount of control over luck. He’d end up tripping or something if he got too close to him.</p><p>Octavio didn’t even know if Taejoon would be playing. Why would he? He’d been gone for several years—these types of games were probably below him, now. With gritted teeth he nearly ran face-first into an Aphrodite kid, who was checking his makeup in a compact mirror, dagger held loosely at his side.</p><p>“Sorry, amigo,” Octavio said, pushing him over into a small pond. The Aphrodite kid shrieked in despair, but nobody came to his aid, which was a little weird.</p><p>Maybe when he had turned left, he had gone too far out of the Ares team’s formation...</p><p>Heading east now, he continued sprinting, eyes scanning the area for a familiar head of black hair. </p><p>
  <em> Come on....where is he....where the hell is he... </em>
</p><p>Maybe he should head back to the cabins. Hunt him down while everyone else was occupied. Scream at him. Let his emotions be felt without having to worry about everybody knowing his personal busi—</p><p>With a loud<em> crack, </em>Octavio was sprung up into the air, body forcefully curling up as he was ensnared in a net, dangling from one of the taller trees in the area. He had barely managed to avoid stabbing his own arm with his knife when he had been caught, at the cost of it being at an awkward angle. His head felt woozy from the sudden rush, and his own metal foot was digging into his thigh.</p><p>Grunting, he blinked his eyes open and tried taking in his surroundings. He had no idea how he had gotten caught up in this net—the ones who usually set traps were the Hephaestus kids, and they were on <em> his </em> team. Unless he had accidentally wandered into Athena territory, he wasn’t sure how this could happen.</p><p>Upon closer inspection, though, he realized that the net was made out of regular rope. The Hephaestus kids took pride in their traps—their nets were usually woven with Celestial bronze to make cutting out of them nigh-impossible. The person who had made this was clearly an amatuer.</p><p>“Yah. In a tight spot?”</p><p>Of fucking course.</p><p>Craning his neck down, he spotted Taejoon smiling up at him. To think that so long ago he would have paid actual money to have Taejoon smile like that, but now, it was just infuriating. He was wearing his orange camp shirt, like Octavio was, and similar armor. His sword—longer than Octavio’s blade but heavier, so he couldn’t swing it as fast—was sheathed at his hip, and his scuffed jeans were tucked into his white boots, the soles muddy from, presumably, wading through Zephyros Creek. Octavio wondered if the other had been looking for him, as well.</p><p>“Are you sure you’re not a Hephaestus kid?” Octavio asked, trying not to show how frustrated he was, but he was sure the other could feel it.</p><p>“Yeah,” Taejoon said, leaning against a tree and crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ve just gotten used to running—only an idiot would leave an area without any traps set. And only an idiot would look for me without checking for them.”</p><p>Face flushing hot, Octavio gripped his knife steadily in his hand, and said, “Oh yeah? Didn’t even realize you were playing, compadre. I’ve gotten so used to you not being here.”</p><p>Taejoon averted his eyes, as if thinking of something to say, and Octavio sliced his blade up, cleanly severing the rope hanging the net up. Dropping through the sky, he tried to land on his feet, but stumbled and fell to his side with an <em> “ow!” </em></p><p>“I would have let you down if you had asked,” Taejoon said.</p><p>“Fuck off.”</p><p>“Anger isn’t a good look on you. I’m used to your hyperactivity.”</p><p>“And I’m used to you fucking off.”</p><p>Taejoon stared at him, eyebrows furrowed. They glared at one another, Octavio panting a little from all that running he had just done. Finally, Taejoon said, “If you would let me explain myself—”</p><p>Octavio swung his knife so fast he almost didn’t comprehend it, pointing the sharp tip so close to the other’s jugular that if he inched closer, he would be piercing his skin. Taejoon’s hand had jumped to his sword, equally as fast, but had the disadvantage of not already having it out like Octavio did. He had drawn it, but it was gripped loosely in his hand, raised but unsteady. He usually needed two hands to swing it properly, but was good at blocking one-handed. Too bad Octavio had been faster.</p><p>“I’ve never seen you this mad,” Taejoon said. He was no longer smiling—it looked like he had given up the facade of trying to pretend they were alright with one another, and the scowl that had been permanently etched on his face for most of his final year at camp was back.</p><p>“You broke—” Octavio stuttered a little, face flushing again. <em> My heart?? </em> What was he, five? And while he would be all too happy to pin all the blame on Taejoon, he had to admit that he might have been the cause of their awkwardness during their final hours together.</p><p>A memory broke through the muddled surface of his mind, an awkward hug and a declaration of vengeance, and he found his words. “—our promise.”</p><p>“It was never meant to be kept.”</p><p>“So you <em> lied </em> to me?”</p><p>“Gods, Octavio,” Taejoon swore, and he sheathed his sword with an angry movement. “I didn’t mean to. But things got complicated.”</p><p>“Oh yeah?” Octavio asked, latching onto those words—anything to prove that the other was in the wrong. “So you made a promise you couldn’t keep and left because it got rough for <em> widdle ‘ole Taejoon?</em>”</p><p>Taejoon was unimpressed. “You can be very mean-spirited sometimes, but that was weak.”</p><p>Realizing that his anger was building up in his chest while Taejoon remained mostly unaffected, Octavio let his knife drop, taking a deep breath while Chiron’s words repeated themselves in his head. <em> Breathe. Smile. Keep your head steady on your shoulders. </em></p><p>Yeah, he wasn’t going to fucking smile, but he wasn’t going to explode either, lest he cause a ruckus. He also was not going to sheathe his knife, so he returned his glare to Taejoon, who was watching him, calculating.</p><p>“So where have you been, then?” Octavio asked, voice steady despite it all.</p><p>Taejoon shrugged. “Around.”</p><p>What the fuck kind of non-answer was that? He opened his mouth to cuss him out, but Taejoon raised his hand, sighing.</p><p>“Alright. Everywhere. Olympus. Took a boat to try and find Orpheus. Met Polyphemus instead. Went into the Underworld, but I fell into Tartarus and it took me two months to claw my way out. Stayed with my old caretaker for a year because the Furies were following me and she’s good at hiding.”</p><p>Trying to process all that information, his mouth gaped open, he struggled to think of a proper response. He had no idea how any of that happened, but his most pressing question was, “You went into Tartarus without me?”</p><p>“I<em> fell,</em>” Taejoon stressed.</p><p>“Why didn’t you call for help, then?” Octavio demanded, because what the fuck. What if he had just been trapped there for all eternity, and Octavio would never have even<em> known? </em>Tartarus was the deepest, most evil part of hell...how the fuck did he even escape?</p><p>“I think I tried,” Taejoon laughed humorlessly, and Octavio noticed that there was a rather haunted look in the glaze of his eyes. “There’s no light in Tartarus, but I think I...I might have tried sending you an Iris message, once.”</p><p>Octavio swallowed, trying to imagine it—at camp, in his room, sleeping through a message from his missing best friend who had fallen into the furthest depths of hell. His stomach churned. "What do you mean, you think?”</p><p>“A lot of it is hazy,” Taejoon admitted, scuffing the ground with the sole of his boot. “It’s...an awful place. Mystik—my old caretaker—found me when I got out. Well, when I got out, I passed out in the street and had to be taken to a hospital. She recognized me on TV and flew out to get me, but I was in a coma for about a week. I don’t remember too much. I think I almost died three separate times.”</p><p>Octavio wanted to make a snappy comeback, or a mean-spirited joke, but he could sense that the other was on edge just recounting the story. He wondered if he didn’t really remember it, like he said, or was just telling Octavio he didn’t remember because he didn’t want to be made to relive what was probably the most horrifying experience of his life. Seeing the other clench his fists, he instinctively reached out, mindlessly wanting to calm him down and take the edge off, before he snatched his hand away. </p><p><em> No, Octavio, </em> he told himself. <em> You’re supposed to be angry right now. </em></p><p>“How did you even get there, anyway?” Octavio asked, curious, and Taejoon sighed.</p><p>“I was trying to get Mila back. I insulted Hades before I fell into Tartarus. It’s why the Furies were after me when I escaped—he’s mad that I kept trying.”</p><p>“Are you still trying?”</p><p>Taejoon lifted his eyes to the sky, which was clear and blue. But miles around them, it was stormy and cloudy, their little valley existing in a protected circle of sunshine. It really was the safest place for a demigod to be, but he felt that standing here and talking about Tartarus and Hades and all that—it was bringing them ever closer to danger.</p><p>“I think I’ve made peace with the fact that I can’t get her back,” he said after the silence had stretched on for too long. “I’ve cut ties with the past. I’m...focusing on the present, now.”</p><p>The sound of arrows whizzing through the air made them both jerk their heads to the source—they saw a gaggle of Apollo kids chasing after Natalie, who had the Ares flag clutched close to her body despite the fact that she was usually on guard duty. He wondered if the Athena kids had noticed his absence.</p><p>When Octavio turned his head back to face the other, he noticed that Taejoon was wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, and when he lowered it, as if everything was fine, there was a stray tear at the corner of his left eye.</p><p>He was torn—wanting to be angry that he had been left behind, angry that the other had fallen into fucking Tartarus, had gone on suicide mission after suicide mission to bring his sister back—but after hearing all that, he was glad that the other was simply alive.</p><p>“That—that still doesn’t explain you leaving me,” Octavio said, trying to search for a reason to have his anger outweigh the rest of his emotions.</p><p>“To be frank,” Taejoon said, meeting his eyes. “It was because I liked you too much.”</p><p>There was a pause.</p><p>“Oh, shut the <em> hell </em> up,” Octavio snapped. That had done it—he was <em> really </em>pissed off, now, and he almost didn't care.</p><p>“That th-thing we did, before I left,” Taejoon said, as if embarrassed to say it. “It was...I <em> liked </em> it. I did. And that scared me, Octavio. It scared me that I liked you so much, because I couldn’t bring myself to start something with you. I had been planning on leaving for a long time. You kissing me only made me do it sooner.”</p><p>“What kind of bullshit is that?” Octavio’s voice raised, and he stepped forward angrily, on his tiptoes so he wasn’t having to look up at the other, making them eye-level. “Shut the fuck up with your stupid <em> ‘I didn’t want to like you’ </em> thing. You’re not a hero, Park. Neither of us are. You could have fucking <em> told </em> me—”</p><p>“I wasn’t ever going to come back,” Taejoon raised his voice, sounding just as angry as Octavio, now. “I wanted to get Mila back and leave all this demigod stuff behind, Silva. I didn’t care who my parent was anymore. I didn’t want to have to look at my sword ever again. I was going to fucking quit it all. I couldn’t do that if I was in love with you. I couldn't do that <em> to </em>you."</p><p>Octavio acted without thinking—swung his knife, blinded with rage, and got even angrier when Taejoon parried his attack, quickly. He hadn’t even drawn his sword, just ripped the sheath from his hip and raised it to prevent the other from stabbing him.</p><p>“You think you’re so—” Octavio grunted with every word, kicking Taejoon and whacking him repeatedly with the flat of his blade. “Fucking heroic and brave and tragic and you think it was good for both of us that you didn’t explain jack shit to me! Boohoo, I get it, you have abandonment issues and wanted your family back. I have issues too, asshole, and you certainly weren’t helping!”</p><p>“You’re being a child,” Taejoon accused, still not having drawn his sword, like he was letting Octavio hit him, and that was just pissing him off even more.</p><p>“Fight back,” Octavio growled, low in his throat, a sound he didn’t know he’d been capable of making. A few birds took flight, squawking at the amount of rage building up inside the son of Dionysus. “Hit me!<em> Asshole!</em>”</p><p>“I’m still in love with you!” Taejoon shouted at him, as if that would help matters.</p><p>“So am I!” Octavio yelled back, and kicked Taejoon in the chest with so much force that he flew to the ground. “I’m still going to kick your fucking ass!”</p><p>His legs were made of Celestial bronze and could give people a few nasty cracked ribs, but Taejoon was wearing light armor, so he was just winded, laying on the dirt on his back and trying to catch his breath. Octavio clambered on top of him while he was down, wanting to punch him, but froze when he saw something around his neck.</p><p>A familiar necklace, with many of the same beads as Octavio’s. While he himself had eleven beads on his, Taejoon’s had six, having arrived after Octavio and left four years earlier. He was shocked that it hadn't been lost in these past few years, that he had had it on him this whole time. He grabbed it, yanking it from the other’s throat with a little noise of confusion.</p><p>“You still have this?” He asked loudly, dangling it in front of his face to take a closer look. “Why didn’t you throw it away?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Taejoon mumbled, glancing away from him. "I couldn't let it go."</p><p>The fact that he still had it after all that bullshit about abandoning the demigod thing was really not helping Octavio’s anger. He tossed the necklace aside, hearing the beads clatter against the dirt ground and scatter everywhere. He raised a fist—he wasn’t going to punch Taejoon, just wanted to make him flinch before screaming at him some more—but the thing was, the other didn’t even blink. Just stared up at Octavio defiantly, jaw set.</p><p>They glared at one another, equally red-faced and sweaty, both panting from the screaming and the kicking. Octavio then became acutely aware of the fact that he was straddling the other’s thighs, leaning all of his weight onto him. Half of him wished this position was happening under different circumstances. The other half of him was shouting at himself, <em>Be angry, not horny. </em></p><p>“Can you get off my dick,” Taejoon said after a while of more heated staring. Octavio's face felt even hotter than before because he had just been thinking the same thing.</p><p>“I. Hate. You.”</p><p>“You just admitted to being in love with me,” the other man pointed out.</p><p>“Shut the fuck up,” Octavio said, and then kissed him.</p><p>It was not a nice kiss. Very different from their first one four years ago, gripping the other by the front of his jacket, pulling him down in a moment of excitement and frenzy. <em> This </em> kiss was heated but not in the sexy kind of way—a lot of teeth clacking, and would certainly result in bruised lips later on. Four years of resentment and worry and torture, all conveyed in one kiss—it was kind of nauseating, almost, and he pulled away to catch his breath, chest tight, a similar feeling to when he used to wear a binder and it kept his breathing strained.</p><p>"...I liked that," Taejoon mumbled.</p><p>"I did too," Octavio said, and grabbed the other's hair roughly, tugging and kissing him once again. He was still angry—he was sure that everyone could feel it—this was just...a different type of outlet for it.</p><p>“Isn’t this just lovely,” a snide voice said, and the two scrambled away from one another quickly, afraid that they had been caught by another camper, which, how fucking embarassing would that be? But when they both looked up, Octavio’s heart jumped into his throat at the person before him.</p><p>His father was standing there. Literally. Forty-something, graying black hair and a ruffled mustache that made him look like a walrus. Lines around his face, and many of the same beauty marks that Octavio also had. It was most certainly his father, except for the fact that he was not dressed like his father.<em> At all. </em></p><p>He wore a red leather jacket and a tight pair of black jeans, a whip located at his hip, not unlike the Furies. He wore leather boots and was currently leaned up against a classic-looking motorcycle, which, Octavio had no idea how the fuck he drove that thing in here without either of them hearing.</p><p>It was incredulous. Impossible. And yet there he stood, in all his mortal glory, arms crossed over his chest and fixing the two of them with a look that was both smug and intense.</p><p>“<em>Dad?</em>” Octavio asked, dumbfounded and with his mind moving at a million miles an hour, because how the <em> fuck </em> had Kishou Silva gotten past the camp borders?</p><p>“I ain’t your padre, hero,” his father said, but it was clearly a woman’s voice speaking. It was jarring to hear coming from his father’s mouth—cool and smooth, like honey, but with a cruel edge to it. <em> Poisonous </em> honey. “Interesting that that’s who you see, though.”</p><p>Octavio turned to Taejoon, confused. “Are you seeing this?”</p><p>“It looks like a woman to me,” Taejoon said, eyes narrowed in suspicion. There was spit at the corner of his mouth from their kissing, and Octavio felt even more horrified that someone who looked like his dad had just witnessed him angrily make out with Taejoon Park.</p><p>“Because I <em> am </em> a woman.” His father-not-father stood up straight, cracking their neck. “My name is Nemesis. You might know me as the goddess of revenge. Naturally, I look like the one you wish vengeance upon.”</p><p>“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” Taejoon said in disbelief. </p><p>Nemesis grinned at him, eyes kindling with fire. “Do I look like a woman with spiky black hair? Gold eyes? Scar on my cheek?”</p><p>Taejoon nodded, silent, and she gave a short laugh, eyes intense. Despite her laughter, it didn't seem very kind, nor did she seem to be in a good mood.</p><p>“I see. Interesting. The one you wish vengeance upon the most is me.”</p><p>Octavio jerked his head to the other man, eyebrows raised. “Why do you have beef with the goddess of revenge?”</p><p>Taejoon shrugged, equally as dumbfounded. Nemesis rolled her eyes, which was really weird, because she still looked like Octavio’s father to him.</p><p>“I’m your...what’s the word in Korean? <em> Eomma, </em>right?”</p><p>Taejoon got to his feet then, and Octavio followed suit, trying to process those words because...Taejoon’s mom was <em> Nemesis? </em></p><p>Several theories had been floated around at camp ever since Taejoon’s arrival ten years ago. Being an unclaimed demigod past the age of thirteen was unheard of, so naturally people tried to figure out why, and filled in the blank spot of his godly parent with their own reasoning.</p><p>Some theorized that he was the son of Athena, what with his strategic mind, or the son of Hephaestus, with his knack for tech. Others thought that he might not even <em> be </em> a demigod—a mortal like Renee who could see through the Mist, and could somehow consume nectar at the same time. Though Renee couldn’t drink nectar or eat ambrosia due to the fact that she was mortal, people were willing to think that he somehow could be the exception to this rule, because it would explain why no god had stepped forward to claim him yet.</p><p>Years of speculation, long nights of he and Taejoon lying side-by-side in the woods as the other raged quietly about the gods who had rejected him—all of it culminating in the random appearance of Nemesis, declaring that she was Taejoon’s mom, felt like a sick joke.</p><p>“Why?” Taejoon asked, some mix of angry and bewildered, and Octavio could almost taste it. “Ten years of silence...why <em> now?</em>”</p><p>“I’m not one to get in the way of some good old-fashioned revenge,” Nemesis answered, picking her way through the brush of the woods, before standing not too far from either of them. The illusion flickered momentarily, and he swore he saw her in her true form—young with angular features, eyes burning with a kind of fire that would burn most normal people alive. The image then righted itself, and she looked like his father once again, though she appeared taller than his actual height. It was kind of disturbing. “Watching your desire for retribution grow amused me."</p><p>“So you let me—” Taejoon began, an edge creeping into his voice, but she interrupted him.</p><p>“Let me finish.” Nemesis randomly deposited a fortune cookie into his hands, which made Octavio raise an eyebrow. Were all gods wackjobs? Was that a requirement? "Kid, I knew if I told you I was your mom, you’d go down an even darker path. I needed you to make peace with the past before I stepped in. This was for the best—it was what you needed to move on."</p><p>Octavio watched the fury work itself across Taejoon’s face, and wanted to laugh at the other getting a taste of his own medicine; having someone else decide what was good for him. But he bit his tongue, deciding that, for once, he shouldn't say anything.</p><p>“I reject you,” Taejoon said after several long moments of heatedly staring his mother down, and clenched his fist around the fortune cookie given to him. It crumbled, but within a blink of an eye had been reformed. </p><p>“Too bad,” Nemesis said, placing her hand on her whip. Octavio was worried she would use it on them, but she just gazed out into the distance, as if thinking about something. “Believe it or not, I care about my kids. I’m not <em> just </em> the goddess of revenge—I like balance. I needed you to balance your life out before I could add more weight onto it.”</p><p>He and Taejoon exchanged glances, as if to silently communicate <em> Can you believe this lady? </em> It sounded like a load of bullshit to Octavio—surely telling him his godly heritage would have prevented his anger directed towards the gods, right? <em> Right? </em></p><p>“I see you need some time,” Nemesis said, and reached out to place her hand on Taejoon’s face in what was almost a motherly gesture—which was absolutely disgusting to see in Octavio’s dad’s body. Taejoon flinched away, but she didn’t seem too offended. She smiled at him humorlessly, eyes still intense, before swivelling her gaze towards Octavio. It made him feel hot inside—he almost wanted to yell at Taejoon some more, let him feel what Octavio felt, allow rage to overtake him once more—but he realized it was just the goddess’s aura affecting him, adding fuel to his fire.</p><p>“Son of Dionysus,” she said, and he bristled a little bit, uncomfortable. “The amount of grief you’ve caused one another...I’d say it’s pretty fair and even. I’d like it if you two could resolve your conflict. If not...”</p><p>Another hot flash made him feel queasy. “Yes ma’am.”</p><p>She gave him a fortune cookie, lips turned down at the corners. “Take this.”</p><p>He stared at it, brows furrowed. “...Gracias?”</p><p>“I’m also pretty sure you’ve caused a riot,” Nemesis said, gesturing in the opposite direction. “I’d calm down before Dionysus handles you himself.”</p><p>And with that, she disappeared in a burst of flame, which made both he and Taejoon yell in shock. When the sparks faded, they stared at one another silently, their respective fortune cookies clutched tightly in their hands. Taejoon’s face was flushed red, from anger or embarrassment he didn’t know, but he didn’t have time to ponder—the other turned on his heel and stormed away, cutting through the brush with his sword with little regard to anything else.</p><p>“Hey!” Octavio said, chasing after him. A tree nymph cussed out Taejoon for chopping one of her branches off, but he paid neither her nor Octavio any mind, continuing his way back to camp, where they could hear shouts and the clangs of swords echoing through the woods.</p><p>“Taejoon!”</p><p>“Leave me alone,” the other man said. “I need to think.”</p><p>“But—” Octavio’s words faded away at the scene before him—several campers lying unconscious, many more sitting around with bloody noses or bruised eyes or cut-up bodies. Every pair of eyes seemed to laser in on him, accusing, as he stumbled into the clearing. “Um.”</p><p>“Mr. Silva,” Chiron said, sounding exhausted. There were several twigs in his usually immaculate beard, and a toy arrow was stuck to his horse butt. “I see you’ve returned. And with Mr. Park in one piece.”</p><p>He felt hot again, but this time not from a goddess staring him down—no, this time, it was good ‘ole embarrassment. He’d been a fucking idiot to lose control back there and think that his emotions wouldn’t be felt by the rest of camp, when he had <em> clearly </em> caused a bloodbath. Even worse, he was afraid that they had felt the specifics of his emotions, and had pieced together his feelings towards Taejoon as a whole.</p><p>This was confirmed when two Aphrodite kids pointed at Taejoon and giggled to one another quietly.</p><p>
  <em> Fuck this. </em>
</p><p>Thankfully, the perfect distraction provided itself in the form of a fortune cookie materializing in thin air and dropping onto Chiron’s head. Not seeming very surprised, he picked it off and cracked it open, putting one half in his mouth and chewing thoughtfully while he read off the fortune inside. He then knelt his stallion legs in what was unmistakably a bow and announced, “Taejoon Park, son of Nemesis.”</p><p>The rest of the campers followed suit—at least, those that could. The unconscious ones didn’t stir, but everyone else was causing ruckus enough for them—open-mouthed gaping and wide eyes, whispers of <em> “Nemesis?” </em> and <em> “He’s finally claimed?” </em> echoing throughout the clearing. Taejoon didn’t stick around for any of them—he pushed past Chiron without a word, heading back towards the cabins, and after a moment of deliberation, Octavio followed.</p><p>He locked eyes with Ajay, who raised her brows, mouthing <em> ‘what’s up?’ </em> He tapped his wrist, code for <em> ‘later’ </em>, before jogging to catch up with the other man.</p><p>The two of them reached the U-formation of cabins, with several other smaller cabins scattered at the end, as though they had been added as an afterthought. Because they technically <em> were;</em> and amongst them sat the Nemesis cabin, bright red with a broken wheel above the door that resembled Pac-man, which seemed to stand out in the setting sun. Taejoon paused in the middle of all the cabins, near the great hearth that burned in the center, flames bright and burning despite the warmth of the air.</p><p>Octavio stood behind him, trying to figure out what to say, because what <em> do </em> you say after you yelled and kicked someone, and then kissed them, and then found out that their godly parent was Nemesis, goddess of retribution and justice and all that spicy shit? How do you come back from that?</p><p>“TJ,” he started, using the nickname he hadn’t used since they were kids. “Back there—”</p><p>“Fuck this,” Taejoon said, sounding as if he were trying his best to be monotone, but hints of anger and exhaustion and sadness were creeping through. “Just...fuck all of this.”</p><p>He watched the other’s shoulders slump, head bent as if to shield his face from the unforgiving rays of the sun. Octavio walked up to the other’s side and leaned against the hearth with him, trying to get a glimpse at his expression, but Taejoon purposely turned his face away, and he sighed.</p><p>It was such a flip from earlier—Taejoon was now the angry one, but for deeper, more saddening reasons that weren’t directed at Octavio. He still wanted to be mad at him, but felt like it was a joke in comparison to Taejoon’s ten years of suffering and searching, so he swallowed his pride and kicked the other’s shin lightly with his metal foot. “Hey. C’mon, amigo. Let’s move your stuff to the Nemesis cabin.”</p><p>“For the past four years,” Taejoon said as if he hadn't heard him, voice stilted as he turned the fortune cookie over in his fingers. “For the past four years, I’ve been searching for answers. I’ve been trying to find out the truth—and it just popped in front of me, and<em> told me.</em>”</p><p>“That’s rough buddy,” Octavio said awkwardly.</p><p>“All I needed to do was...forget it all? I had to <em> stop </em> looking for her so she could come to me?” His fist clenched, and the fortune cookie crumbled. This time, it didn’t reform, and the paper slip inside flew out of his palm and into the burning fire. “...Olympus is a joke.”</p><p>He sounded more defeated than angry, which Octavio was glad for. He didn’t need another declaration of vengeance, and he hadn’t liked the sound of Nemesis saying Taejoon would have gone down a darker path if he’d known the truth all along.</p><p>But how? Would the knowledge of his heritage only have enabled his thirst for retribution, but his lack thereof had put a stop to it before it got out of hand? Octavio knew that he, personally, had never cared about how his actions affected others until they were<em> literally </em>affecting them as the son of Dionysus. Would it have gone the same for Taejoon had he been aware that he was the son of the goddess of revenge?</p><p>“A little bit, yeah,” Octavio agreed, and felt a little better at the stiff upturn of the other’s lips. “But man, she went easy on you. Have you ever heard about what she did to her other kids? She probably decided that you’ve been through enough.”</p><p>Taejoon laughed humorlessly, and Octavio was reminded that this man had literally escaped from Tartarus. “Small comfort.”</p><p>He straightened up, flicking his hair out of his eyes, which had gone from straight and neat to frizzy from humidity. He looked at Octavio, who felt his face flush as he suddenly remembered what had gone on in the woods.</p><p>“Listen—” he began, rushing out his words, but Taejoon interrupted him.</p><p>“A truce, for now.”</p><p>The other man held out his hand, and Octavio stared at it. He had a lot of conflicting emotions—anger, pride, the want to make out with him and the want to punch him in his face. He eventually took it, and shook it tentatively, making eye contact with Taejoon, who pursed his lips and glanced away.</p><p>Okay. So they were pretending that it didn't happen.</p><p>He helped the other carry his things from the Hermes cabin to the Nemesis cabin, which housed three other campers, a stark contrast from Hermes’ twelve. He smiled a little when he saw the other still brought his computer and phone inside camp borders despite the rules against it—maybe not <em> everything </em> had changed over the years.</p><p>He carried the other's duffel for him, and noticed the corner of a purple shirt peeking out from inside. He moved to unzip the duffel and inspect it, but a hand circled itself around his wrist and he looked up, meeting Taejoon's gaze.</p><p>"I've got it," the other man said quietly. Octavio let go of the duffel, still staring at him curiously, before the door burst open and Damien White announced that it was dinner time.</p><p>Despite the bloodbath that had taken place earlier, the camp held a bonfire anyway at the amphitheater after dinner. Nearly a hundred campers lined the amphitheater seats, singing corny demigod songs and roasting marshmallows and what have you. Ajay provided the beat with her shock sticks, banging against a<em> toubeleki </em> with expertise while everyone sang, as if pretending everything was okay. No prophecy, no sparks of violence provided by one son of Dionysus, and no newly claimed children of Nemesis.</p><p>He and Taejoon pretended like they hadn’t fought one another in the woods, or kissed each other. Even though Taejoon had gone back to retrieve the scattered beads of his necklace, repairing the snapped string with scotch tape, he answered all questions of <em> ‘what happened to it?’ </em> with a simple shrug, though Octavio was pretty sure everyone already knew the answer.</p><p>As the campfire sparked brightly, fifteen feet in the air and bright gold but with the occasional purple spark to showcase the campers' hidden nervousness, Octavio turned to the other and asked as quietly as he could, “Are you leaving?”</p><p>He wasn't sure if he wanted to know the answer. Wasn't sure if what he would hear would only serve to make him angry again, but he was trying to keep himself calm.</p><p>Taejoon sat back, resting his weight on his palms as he watched the campfire, dousing his features in a golden glow that really made him seem his age—twenty-six. </p><p>Gods, had it really been that long...? Were they both really in their mid-twenties now, doing all this angsty teen shit?</p><p>Cutting through his thoughts, the other responded simply, “Yeah.”</p><p>Ignoring the coldness in his chest, Octavio laughed without humor and asked, “How soon?”</p><p>“I’ll stay for the summer. But then I’ll be going.”</p><p>A few more purple sparks shot from the campfire—Octavio’s doing as he tapped his fingers impatiently against his thigh, clenching his teeth. Remembering Nemesis’s words from earlier, he forced himself to calm down, and said, “Alright. Like Ajay, I guess.”</p><p>“Yeah, but.” Taejoon sat forward, now resting his elbows on his knees. “I want you to come with me.”</p><p>Octavio jerked his head towards the other, eyes wide because <em> what. </em></p><p>“Maybe we can find Anita,” Taejoon continued, keeping his gaze steady with his, and reached over to touch Octavio’s wrist lightly. “And you won’t have to be so restrained. I can handle you.”</p><p>That sounded nice. And also horrible, at the same time.</p><p>On the one hand—yeah, he wanted to be able to live with his emotions free, let them run wild and not have to worry about affecting Taejoon too much. Would he still have to worry about mortals? Yeah, sure—but mortals were always a safer gamble to anger than a bunch of powerful demigods with like, swords and shit.</p><p>On the other hand, he would be leaving his family behind. A broken family, with ever-changing faces and powers that went berserk. But a family nonetheless. The only one he’d ever really had. </p><p>Dionysus, and his weird tough love that was probably more contempt than anything...Marvin, the cyclops that had followed Elliott back to camp one summer and refused to leave....Natalie, beloved granddaughter of Zeus, in charge of camp border defense...Renee, with her weird pale eyes and even weirder prophecies...</p><p>But they were all starting to break off and find themselves out in the real world. Elliott with his mom, and putting his Hephaestus kid skills to use and helping her run the family mechanic shop. Ajay with her medical prowess, going to medical school and getting a degree to help those in need. Makoa was planning to leave soon to aid others in rescue work, with his insane luck at finding and saving people from disasters...</p><p>What if he was the only one who stayed stationary? What if Natalie eventually went on to study electrical engineering? What if Anita had gone to join the military after all? Would he be the only one still holding onto Camp Half-Blood, the idea of stability that he'd never quite had growing up?</p><p>For someone who liked constant movement, constant energy and a constant rush...it didn’t seem so appealing, when put into that perspective.</p><p>So he answered, “I’ll think about it. But this doesn’t change the fact that you abandoned me.”</p><p>“I don’t expect it to,” Taejoon said, and they both looked away from one another. To give his twitchy hands something to do, Octavio cracked open the fortune cookie Nemesis had given him, chewing both ends before unfurling the paper to read it.</p><p>
  <b>Look up, idiot.</b>
</p><p>Confused, he did look up, wanting to ask Taejoon why it said that, but a pair of lips found themselves on his, and he jerked away violently, eyes wide.</p><p>Taejoon stared at him. “S-sorry.”</p><p>“Warn a guy before you do that,” Octavio huffed, and the fire grew even higher into the air, reaching its peak at twenty feet. </p><p>“Sorry...”</p><p>“Well, do it again. Better this time.”</p><p>“You’re insufferable.”</p><p>“This is how you can start making everything up to me.”</p><p>Taejoon rolled his eyes. “Aren’t <em> I </em> supposed to be the one who likes fairness and justice?”</p><p>“I dunno, nerd,” Octavio said, gripping the front of the other’s shirt and tugging him closer. His heart was beating in his chest, and he felt like his emotions were about to run haywire. “Are you?”</p><p>They kissed again, and again, and two times more before the Aphrodite kids went<em> ‘awww’, </em>reminding them that they were both surrounded by a hundred other kids.</p><p>They both looked away from one another as the other campers whooped and cheered—Ajay laughed at them both, shaking her shock sticks at them teasingly. The Ares cabin wanted to toss them into the canoe lake, per camp tradition every time a couple got together, but they managed to narrowly escape by hiding in the Nemesis cabin, where more kisses were exchanged, and Octavio let himself just feel...a lot. At once.</p><p>"Will you go with me?" Taejoon breathed against his lips, desperate after a long emotional day.</p><p>"I don't know yet." Octavio hooked one leg around the other's waist, feeling up the other's built chest, five years of secret desire pouring out of him at an embarrassing rate. "Apologize to me some more and maybe I'll say yes."</p><p>"Annoying," Taejoon laughed breathlessly against him, calmed down a little after Octavio had touched him, and kissed him again. Octavio kissed back, angry and relieved and glad and worried and excited, all at the same time, yet he didn’t care.</p><p>And somehow, nobody else did, either.</p><hr/><p>“I hope you cleaned your bunk,” Dionysus said, sounding disinterested.</p><p>“And if I didn’t?”</p><p>“You’ll find that I am able to locate you instantly anywhere in the world, and that my wrath should not be tested.”</p><p>Octavio threw a pair of socks that he didn’t need anymore at the god. “Okay, old man.”</p><p>A few of the younger campers—maybe about twelve—looked at him with wide eyes, horrified at the fact that he was talking back to the scary camp director, but Octavio feared no god. <em> Especially </em> not this one.</p><p>(“My mother thinks your arrogance deserves to be punished,” Taejoon had said the week before, flipping around the dagger that Nemesis had gifted to him during one of her random visits in the woods. “You know how she is. Punishing people with good fortune and all that.”</p><p>“I think I was punished enough when my nanny tried to eat me,” Octavio said back, not wanting to be smited by his boyfriend’s mom.</p><p>“Yeah, well,” and here Taejoon leaned against Octavio, who was in turn leaning against a car. He slid a hand down to cup Octavio’s ass, which made him laugh. “Maybe <em> don’t </em> call Dionysus smelly to his face?”</p><p>“But it’s<em> true.</em>”</p><p>The ground rumbled, as if angry, but they paid it no mind. </p><p>“You can’t just call gods smelly.”</p><p>“But what if they are?”</p><p>“Keep it to yourself, then.”</p><p>The hand on his butt squeezed. “Are you feeling me up?”</p><p>Taejoon blinked. “Maybe.”</p><p>Octavio pushed Taejoon off of him with a scoff, but secretly mourned the loss of the other’s hand on him. “C’mon, you’re gonna film me kill this laistrygonian.”</p><p>“I never agreed to this,” Taejoon sighed, looking at the giant, man-eating monster storming around in the pit below them.</p><p>“Uh, yeah you did. It was in the secret contract you signed when you agreed to become my boyfriend.”</p><p>“I don’t think that’s lawful.”</p><p>“Aww, what is the son of justice gonna do, huh? Take me to court?”</p><p>“Don’t know yet,” Taejoon said, and leaned to press a kiss to Octavio’s neck, which made him grin wide.)</p><p>“C’mon, slowpoke,” Ajay called, loading her own luggage into the back of the truck that Makoa would be using to drive the three of them to the airport. She would be heading back to Boston for Harvard to attain her medical degree, while Taejoon and Octavio would be flying to L.A. to meet up with Taejoon’s old caretaker, Mystik. It was the last day of summer camp, and several campers had come to say goodbye—especially to Octavio, who hadn’t left in the past ten years unless it was for a quest.</p><p>Dionysus was amongst the party of people coming to tell him goodbye, though he was trying to act as though he’d been on his way out anyways, despite the fact that he could literally teleport.</p><p>“I’ve been too lenient on you these past few years,” Dionysus said, popping the tab to a Diet Coke can with a sigh. “I’m going to miss our weekly torture sessions. You were a good person to vent to.”</p><p>“Sorry you can’t take your anger out on me anymore,” Octavio said, mindlessly giving some of the younger campers hugs every time they ran up to him. He hadn’t needed Dionysus for the past two weeks; he had somehow gotten a better handle on his emotions in this one summer than he had in the past six years of doing that stupid emotional training. Ajay theorized that it was because his biggest source of emotional conflict, Taejoon, was no longer a problem. Octavio theorized that he was just fucking awesome and had a divine revelation about how to keep everything on the downlow.</p><p>But it really was freeing, being able to feel angry and happy and excited without causing a riot or any more unwarranted archery practice sessions. He had been doing increasingly wilder things these past few days, just to test the limits of the amount of frenzy he could induce—when he wanted to do it, it came easily to him, but when he didn’t, he just...existed, without causing problems for anyone. It was kinda cool. </p><p>(He was also glad that this happened right as he entered a relationship, because he didn’t know if others would feel his...sexy feelings? If they did, he would have fucking drowned himself in the canoe lake.)</p><p>Natalie ran up to him then, blue eyes narrowed in seriousness as she announced, “I have taken up the quest!”</p><p>Blinking, Octavio asked, “Renee’s prophecy?”</p><p>She nodded eagerly, still trying to appear serious, but was clearly excited. “Chiron allowed it—it’s my first quest, but I’ll be taking Makoa and Marvin with me. We will find Anita.”</p><p>“Good job, amiga,” he said, clapping her on the shoulder and smiling at her. “Tae and I will look for her, too. She was from L.A., right? Maybe we can find her family.”</p><p>“Good luck,” Natalie wished him, before wrapping him up in a tight hug and then moving to say goodbye to Ajay, too. </p><p>Octavio glanced over to see his boyfriend climbing up Half-Blood Hill, black hair swept aside from the wind, tan skin bronze under the sun with his muscles defined clearly beneath his plain black v-neck, which, <em> wrow, </em>did good things to his biceps and chest. He was tugging up his duffel and a couple more bags, one of which he knew was discreetly hiding his computer set-up from Dionysus’s sight.</p><p>Chiron had already said his goodbyes to Octavio, but had caught him in the Nemesis cabin, playing games on Taejoon’s PC when he had said them.</p><p>“I can explain,” Octavio had said after a moment’s silence.</p><p>“I really do not want to hear it,” Chiron responded. “I have enough gray hairs already.”</p><p>Now Taejoon shoved his duffels into the back of Makoa’s truck, sweeping his hair out of his face with a careless hand, and man he was really hot. Octavio was a lucky guy—he couldn’t wait to tap that once they were safely across the country.</p><p>He watched some other campers say goodbye to him, though not as many. Several of the newer campers hadn’t known who Taejoon was, having arrived after he left, but could tell that he was an important person to the more senior campers, so plenty were wishing him well on their journey.</p><p>Taejoon walked over when they had all left to press a quick kiss to Octavio’s forehead, before holding a hand out to Dionysus, offering a handshake. His father gave him an unimpressed look over the top of his Diet Coke can.</p><p>“That’s quite enough, Taeyong. I don’t like touching campers.”</p><p>“Taejoon,” his boyfriend corrected quietly.</p><p>“Nevermind all that. It’s almost one o’clock—you all better be out of my sight within the next five minutes.”</p><p>Octavio and Taejoon turned away from the god, who stalked back down Half-Blood Hill, heading towards the Big House. When he was safely out of earshot, Octavio said, “He’ll call you Taejoon eventually.”</p><p>“I doubt it,” the other said, shoving his hands into his jean pockets. “He only ever calls you and Natalie by your real names. He called Elliott ‘Matthew’ once, which is nowhere<em> close </em> to ‘Elliott’.”</p><p>“Yeah, but you’re dating<em> me, </em> his favorite son,” Octavio said, and they both climbed into the backseat of Makoa’s truck, watching Ajay say her last goodbyes to the Apollo cabin. “Hey, one day, he’ll <em> have </em> to say your name.”</p><p>Taejoon raised an eyebrow. “How so?”</p><p>“Well, if we get married, you’re definitely taking on my last name, so when he says ‘Silva’, he’ll be referring to the both of us.”</p><p>“You’re obnoxious,” Taejoon told him.</p><p>“I try!”</p><p>Taejoon kissed him once again, this time in the safety of Makoa’s truck, away from prying eyes. Just a gentle press against his lips, a kiss that promised more later, when they weren’t surrounded by kids and their friends who would relentlessly tease them if they caught them making out <em> again. </em></p><p>His heart was thumping in his chest as he watched the other campers slowly disperse, leaving them behind as they headed back to their daily activities. He hadn’t truly left camp in a decade, and now he was leaving it with Taejoon at his side. He would have never dreamed of it last year, when they had all still thought the other was dead, and even now he had some doubts in the back of his mind—but this was the next logical step in his life. He couldn’t stay at camp<em> forever. </em> He needed to move on.</p><p>They still had some personal issues to sort out; Taejoon was haunted by his time in Tartarus, by the negligence of his mother and was still struggling to accept the death of his sister. Octavio was still hurt from Taejoon abandoning him, and was now leaving behind the only people in his life who <em> had </em> to put up with him, including Dionysus, the father he’d never had. But they could work through them together, and maybe find their friend while they were at it. They could do this <em> ‘demigod living in the real world’ </em> thing just fine.</p><p>Ajay climbed back into the truck and Makoa started it, beginning the long drive from Montauk to the airport. Ajay had brought a CD she’d made back at home and slid into the player, cranking the volume up so loudly that Octavio was sure the pegasi back at camp were getting agitated. He sang along anyway, miming playing the guitar with his hands while Ajay hit the dashboard with her shock sticks, mouthing the words energetically.</p><p>Taejoon watched him with a little smile on his face—fond and soft, and it made him feel gooey on the inside. <em> Weirdo. </em> But the gooiness melted away when the other wrapped an arm around his waist, pulling him against his chest to press his nose into his hair and mumbled something about how everything would be alright once they got to L.A.</p><p>“Huh?” Octavio asked, not being able to hear him over the music.</p><p>“I said—”</p><p>“Hey, seatbelts on!” Makoa said, peering at the two of them using the rearview mirror. They slid away from one another, putting on their seatbelts as Makoa jerked the steering wheel, narrowly avoiding a gaggle of satyrs playing hackysack with an apple core. They didn’t seem to mind almost being run over, just waved goodbye to them as they sped down the road.</p><p>Octavio turned to look at Taejoon, who was looking down at his phone. “What’re you doing?”</p><p>“Texting Mystik.”</p><p>“Telling her your sexy boyfriend is on his way?”</p><p>“Telling her my <em> annoying </em>boyfriend is being insufferable.”</p><p>“You love me.” And then, as a joke, added, “Swear it on the River Styx.”</p><p>The River Styx—powerful and ancient, the thing that separated the mortal world from the Underworld. Any oath made upon it was serious and severe, unable to be broken, so he had meant that as a <em> joke </em>.</p><p>But Taejoon said anyways, “I swear it. On the River Styx.”</p><p>There was silence in the car.</p><p>“Dude,” Octavio said, face flushing from secondhand embarrassment.</p><p>“Damn.” Ajay turned around in her seat to face them, eyebrows raised. “Now you two are stuck together <em> forever.</em>”</p><p>“Shut up,” Taejoon said, raising his phone to hide his face, but his ears were clearly burning.The rest of them burst into laughter, and Octavio liked feeling this unrestrained joy. This freeing feeling of knowing he had his best friends by his side, that he was in a relationship with the man he’d been in love with for five years, and he could feel all of it without worrying about starting a riot. It was really fucking nice.</p><p>And it was only the beginning.<strong><br/></strong></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>sorry if it seems a little rushed! this was initially only th/irty d/ollars (censoring so ao3 doesn't nerf me) which would be like. 3k words. as you can see we are well past that LOL</p><p>now that this au is over I can share my headcanons for them!</p><p>octane: son of Dionysus (god of wine, theater, madness, and festivity. also the patron god of trans people)<br/>crypto: son of Nemesis (goddess of revenge, justice, and balance)<br/>lifeline: daughter of Apollo (god of the sun, medicine, music, and prophecy<br/>mirage: son of Hephaestus (god of fires, blacksmiths, and technology). I wanted to make him the son of Aphrodite for fun (goddess of love and beauty), but I can't erase Evelyn Witt like that, man<br/>gibratar: son of Tyche (goddess of luck, fortune, and chance)<br/>bangalore: daughter of Ares (god of war) it was actually a tough choice between Ares and Athena so I flipped a coin to decide LMAO<br/>pathfinder: he's a cyclops in this au<br/>rev: maybeeee the son of Thanatos<br/>wraith: she's the oracle, which means she's a regular human mortal, but she sees through the mist and is possessed by the oracle of Delphi and can make prophecies<br/>wattson: granddaughter of Zeus (god of the sky, lightning, and honor). her dad was the son of zeus but married a mortal woman and had wattson. she has minor powers as a result</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I KNOW I HAVE ANOTHER FIC I NEED TO FINISH BUT THIS ONE TOOK PRIORITY SINCE IM GETTING PAID FOR IT</p><p>title taken from <a href="https://youtu.be/YmimK6HxqK4">dionysus</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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